Building an Autonomous Vehicle: The Batmobile

Pages
Contributors: Nate
Favorited Favorite 8

Control Electronics - Displays

Throttle and displays

Throttle and displays

We cut notches in a 1” tube of PVC and mounted two displays in the Batmobile. The center display is the power meter. Nearly every A+PRS and PRS competitor used these super low-cost power meters to show the battery voltage. We had some issues with it, but it worked well enough. In the end, we noticed the drop in vehicle speed (indicating battery drain) long before we noticed the display was indicating a lower pack voltage. But, it did help us make decisions about when to pit (never!) because the nominal 48V pack voltage was dropping down to 42V where we could begin to damage the SLA.

The display on the right is the 20x4 character debug LCD. It’s basically a souped-up version of our 20x4 SerLCD display (it’s a prototype product, coming soon to a theater near you!).