team

Rutgers Solar Car Team

Rutgers Solar Car builds solar-powered cars to race in the American Solar Challenge. I have served as the team’s low-voltage electronics lead and project manager in the past, and I am currently the team’s main electrical lead. The team was fairly new when I joined, having never built or raced a vehicle before. I began redesigning the team’s electrical system in 2024 and built the entire system for our 2026 entry. The team raced on the track for the first time in its history in the summer of 2026 with our vehicle, in part thanks to my electrical system.

subsystem

Low Voltage System 3 (LV3)

LV3 is my second redesign of the vehicle’s low voltage system, and is the system that raced on our 2026 entry. It consists of several modules sharing a core hardware and software architecture. All modules connect using a daisy-chained “main bus” carrying 12V and CAN, and a custom shared CAN bus library running on all boards abstracts data synchronization and communication failsafes into just a few lines of code.

PCB
firmware

LV3 Core

The first board I built for LV3, designed as a development board with all the shared architecture components present. These include a 5V buck converter supporting up to 24V in, an automotive mini blade fuse, dual parallel main bus connectors for daisy chaining, an STM32 microcontroller, dual CAN-FD capable CAN ports (one on the main bus connector, one on an auxiliary connector), two RGB status indicators (one handled by the CAN library, one handled by application code), 3 buttons, USB, and a Cortex Debug connector.

PCB
firmware

LV3 Dash

A redesigned version of the LV2 dashboard, built around the same display panel and overall shape but with new internals and a capacitive touch panel. Features an STM32 H7 with more RAM to allow full double-buffering, an internal DC-DC converter so it can run straight off the car’s main bus, internal SD card slot and I2S interface, and redesigned layout that exposes USB, debug headers, buttons and LEDs, and a steering wheel d-pad connector on the bottom edge. The redesigned layout allows it to be thinner and more structurally rigid than LV2 Dashboard thanks to low-profile components, SMD-mount connectors, and integration of the FR-4 PCB as a structural element in the mechanical design.

PCB
firmware

LV3 SwitchSense

A general purpose control board with 10 multipurpose 4-pin connectors that can each sense one input and drive one output at up to 3A, switched on the low side, for connecting to illuminated switches, exterior lights, mechanical limit switches (e.g. brake pedal), open-drain controller outputs, relays/contactors, fans, and more. Also features a secondary software-isolated CAN interface for connecting to third-party modules like the motor controller and proxying their CAN data to the main bus safely. 3 of these boards are used on the vehicle.

PCB
firmware

LV3 LVBPS

The vehicle’s low-voltage battery protection system, which handles overvoltage, undervoltage, overcurrent, and overtemperature conditions for the low-voltage battery, as well as managing charging from the DC-DC converter and also precharging the LV main bus when the car is turned on to prevent current surges and detect short circuits. Reports granular fault codes on the main bus. An LV main bus cable was damaged during work on the car at the 2026 competition causing a short circuit, and the smart precharge feature detected this when the car was next turned on, preventing catastrophic failure.

PCB
firmware

LV3 HVBPS

The vehicle’s high-voltage battery protection system, responsible for making the “final decision” on whether to close the contactors in the main battery enclosure and reporting battery information such as cell voltages, pack current, and temperature. Reports granular fault codes on the main bus. Uses an Orion BMS2 as the AFE for cell taps, current sensing, and temperature sensing. Also manages the hardware E-stop chain which can interrupt the main contactors without any software involved, and controls enclosure fans/lights.

firmware component

LV3 CAN

Description coming soon.

subsystem

Modular Battery System (MBS)

The Modular Battery System is a PCB-based electrical interconnect system used to construct the vehicle’s battery pack. Modularity comes from individual modules being easily removable from the pack, and from cells being easily removable from modules, with no spot-welding involved. The PCB nature also allows cell taps to be integrated and cleanly bundled in a single connector, with no messy wires. This system was used to construct the pack for the 2025 and 2026 entry.

MBS 15P Module

PCB battery module holding 15 18650 lithium-ion cells in clip holders connected in parallel, capable of 150A total output. A connector on the top allows for a management card to be added on to monitor the module voltage and individual cell temperatures, and enable automatic passive balancing, without the need for a BMS or for the module to even be installed in the pack.

MBS 12S Smart Backplane

Backplane designed to accommodate 12 MBS modules, connected in series. Each module connection carries the full pack current in addition to an SPI connection for an onboard STM32 to interface with the management cards on the MBS modules, to collect voltage/temperature data and command automatic balancing. Cell taps are also exposed directly on the end of the backplane, allowing for a clean and simple connection to a BMS if the on-module management cards are not implemented. Two of these 12S backplanes were used to build the 24S pack used on the vehicle, but a conventional BMS was used rather than using the smart features due to time constraints.

MBS 14S Lite Backplane

An expanded version of the 12S Smart Backplane accommodating 14 modules in series, with the smart features excluded to simplify the design and allow it to use a 2-layer PCB rather than a 4-layer PCB. Two of these 14S backplanes are planned to be used for an expanded 28S pack for the 2027 entry.

subsystem

Low Voltage System 2 (LV2)

LV2 was my initial redesign of the vehicle’s low voltage system, including 2 PCBs which I designed my freshman year. They were used briefly during some tests, but were replaced by LV3 starting in 2025 in preparation for the 2026 entry.

PCB
firmware

LV2 Mainboard

STM32-based central control board to replace the existing, mostly analog central control board the team had been using previously. Connects to all lights, switches, and contactors, and has I/O ports with GPIO, CAN, and UART to communicate with the BMS, solar charge controllers, and co-designed RSC LV2 Dashboard.

PCB
firmware

LV2 Dashboard

STM32-based 4.3-inch dashboard display I designed alongside the RSC LV2 Mainboard. Onboard display backlight driver and STM32 LTDC peripheral allow using ubiquitous 40-pin parallel RGB displays, such as the particular sunlight-readable display panel used here. Runs LVGL and receives data from the central control board over CAN.