About the team

Motochanics is a student-run team, from University of Aveiro, Portugal, that competes in the Motostudent competition. This international competition takes place every two years and consists in an engineering competition for university students from around the world. The students goal is to apply knowledge acquired during their university studies in a real industrial project, by designing, developing and manufacturing a racing motorbike prototype.
In 2017/2018 we managed to participate in our first race, being the first portuguese team to finish the competition and got 16th place in a total of 45 teams from 4 different continents. For the 2019/2020 MotoStudent we are building a new race bike focusing on what we’ve learned from the past competition, improving in every way we can and building even stronger relationships with past sponsors as well as looking to work with new ones in order to develop the best bike we’ve ever built.

 Telemetry system

With the know-how acquired in the previous competition, it was verified that by monitoring physical quantities of the prototype while on the track, it is possible to adjust and improve its performance. The developed telemetry system is modular and enables real-time wireless monitoring, with the ability to store the acquired data on an SD card.

Structure of the system

The prototype has a KTM 250RC engine controlled by an ECU (Engine Control Unit) by BOSH. To acquire the data of the ECU, a connection is made between it and the data transmission PCB via a CAN bus (CAN1). To make the system modular (add or remove sensors), modules are used to acquire analog values. These modules include the sensor acquisition PCB, which transmits the values obtained by a CAN bus (CAN2) designed for communication between the sensor acquisition PCBs and the data transmission PCB. Finally, for remote data reception of acquired values, the data reception PCB is required, which receives the information by RF communication. 

Figure 2 shows how to the telemetry system will be established and installed in the prototype. The white blocks of the image represent elements already developed or parts of the prototype. 

In Figure 3 it’s represented the part of system that will receive the data values remotely in real time.

Figure 2: Structure of telemetry system to install on prototype.

Figure 3: Structure of telemetry system to receive values remotely. 

PCBWay support would be a huge advantage for our team because they have experience and know-how in developing and manufacturing PCBs. The great advantage is the prototyping time the company offers. Our team is pleased to represent PCBWAY as our sponsor in the Motostudent 2020 edition.