Purdue Solar Racing

Purdue Solar Racing is an undergraduate, extracurricular team that engineers solar-powered electric vehicles to race across America. Our mission is to innovate sustainable transportation technologies while developing foundational engineering skills. Our team of 60+ students spans all engineering disciplines and performs all design, analysis, and manufacturing of our solar car, making us one of the highest-caliber student teams at Purdue.

At PSR, we strive to develop young engineers by teaching sustainable engineering practices and promoting solar energy through national competitions. Last year, we made a historic return to the American Solar Challenge with our car, Lux, marking our first appearance in 20 years. Out of 32 entries, we secured an impressive 6th-place finish!

Building on that success, we are now preparing for two major competitions. In the summer of 2025, we will compete in the Formula Sun Grand Prix with a significantly modified version of Lux. Simultaneously, we are developing an entirely new solar car from the ground up for the 2026 American Solar Challenge.

One of the most ambitious aspects of our work involves overhauling Lux’s electrical system. This includes designing and implementing brand-new boards, displays, and wiring, along with a custom battery management system, a custom motor controller, and custom MPPTs. We know this is no small feat, but we are ready to face this PCB-filled challenge and succeed. As proof of our commitment, we spent over $3,000 on PCBs alone while building Lux last year. This contributed directly to a total electrical budget of approximately $32,000, which was all spent on making the best electric components possible.

Below are just a few of our boards 

1. Display Board

This board contains a STM32H747 for controlling the driver’s main display. The previous design used a Raspberry Pi 5, with an 8” display. This display was too big, and the Raspberry Pi used too much power, so we decided to reduce the size of the display to 5”, and use a microcontroller to reduce the power consumption. This board includes the microcontroller, DRAM chip, a NEO-M8U GPS module, connections for a telemetry radio, CAN communication, and an SD card for data logging.

2) Battery Management System

After using the off the shelf Orion 2 BMS for last year’s competition, we decided we wanted to have some more control over the functionality of our battery manager. Our custom design would include all the circuitry to control contactors, which required external relays on the Orion 2 to function properly, and we could replace it with solid state components. Two stacked boards make up the main controller of the battery manager, including the microcontroller, current measurement, fan control, and the top board performing pack level measurements and controlling contactors. There will be 3 cell-group monitors that contain 12 cell taps and 6 thermistors each, and communicate and receive power from the controller board.

We believe that our project offers one of the best opportunities for undergraduate students to expand their engineering toolbox and prepare for industry. We at PSR would be very grateful for the investment of PCBWay in supporting our team with quality boards and advice. This project would be impossible without sponsors such as yourselves, and we are proud to offer sponsor perks based on our sponsorship packet or any request you may have from us. We are looking forward to working with PCBWay to take Purdue Solar Racing to the next level.

You can find more information about our team as well as our sponsorship package on our website linked below!

https://purduesolar.org/