Latest News

Mar 28, 2012

  • Phoenix Chassis Done and Body Getting Painted!

    The chassis of the Phoenix is complete and the composite body just got shipped off to get painted!!

    We are now working on our suspension, steering and electronics. We're looking to get batteries shipped to us within two weeks and we are aiming to have the vehicle on its own power within a month!!!

Feb 20, 2012

  • Update on construction progress

    The team has been working hard this term on the composite body and titanium frame for the Phoenix.

    All the major parts of the body have been completed and it is nearly all glued together. We have a little bit of surface prep to do before painting. Much of the work that we had to do in 2010 on the body was much easier this time around, as we designed the joggle where the top and bottom halves meet into the construction of the pieces. This allowed us to basically just glue everything together and trim the pieces to size without having to do many more wet lay-ups.

    We would like to thank Katon Precision in Albany for their help machining our wheels and complicated suspension components.

    The team has extended the jig for the frame to accommodate a larger battery pack in this car. We have begun machining the frame and should have the major frame pieces in place in the next week or so.

    We are on track for putting this vehicle together in March!!! The solar array has been done since December and the electronics team has been working hard at designing the cruise control and blinker systems for the vehicle, as well as telemetry systems for transmitting vehicle status reports to the chase vehicle.

    We are still looking for sponsorship for travel to and from the race. Talk to your friends and family who might be in position to support us!

    Thanks to everyone for their hard work and support!

    Questions? Comments? Want more information? Have an idea for our website? Email the team leaders at osusvt@gmail.com.

Dec 9, 2011

Nov 7, 2011

  • Electronics Meeting

    The electronics group met this Thursday and blocked out the plan for the chase vehicle electronics. In addition to basic scouting of the route the chase vehicle also gathers meteorological information and actual solar cell performance data. This information allows look-ahead fine tuning of the drive algorithms for the solar vehicle.

Oct 31, 2011

  • More Solar Modules

    The solar module team continued making modules today. The OSU Solar vehicle team tries to make the absolute most of every dollar, and never shies away from hard work.

  • Electronics Planning

    The electronics team met on Friday and planned out all the differing electronics systems in the Phoenix. Different subgroups were assigned responsibility for each of the different submodules of the Phoenix.

Oct 27, 2011

  • Programming!

    The OSUSVT electronics group worked mainly on visual basic programming today. Hai-Yue worked with the team and they all installed the tools for Visual Basic Development and worked all the way up from making a basic one button application to making an application that used the serial port to interface with the microcontroller running the code that they developed on Tuesday. We are closer to making the car every day!!

  • Electronics Training Session

    The electronics team met this Tuesday and and Team Mentor Hai-Yue Han ran the group through basic microcontroller programming including peripheral operation like serial ports, pushbuttons and LED's. It was an intense session focused on giving an ooverview of what microcontrollers can do, and what they are used for, as well as what tools are used to make them do what you want them to do. Also thanks to Michrochip for sponsoring the electronics team!

Oct 25, 2011

  • More Solar Modules!

    The Solar Module Team has been working hard and are nearly at the halfway point for assembling solar cells into full modules. For each module they have to solder tabs onto each of twelve half cells, then add a bypass diode. After that they laminate the group of cells between layers of glue (EVA) and thin plastic (ETFE) with a layer of fiberglass. The laminator is a special machine that the team custom made. It pulls a vacuum inside of a chamber, then heats the solar module layers to the melting point of the glue and presses the layers together using atmospheric pressure against a flexible membrane inside the laminator. The process is controlled by a program that was written by the solar car team and uses a National Instruments compact DAQ and LabVIEW for the controls.

Oct 24, 2011

  • OSUSVT In The Press

    http://www.dailybarometer.com/from-the-flames-of-odyssey-the-phoenix-rises-to-conquer-1.2662139#.TqXLXHL6Ocd