Brown Formula Racing

Electronics Design and Construction Process

Our goal for the 2022 Brown FSAE Car(lovingly known as RIptide) electronics system was to increase organization and reliability. There are on the order of 500 electronic wires on this year’s car - all of them must be accounted for, to make for easy debugging and replaceability in the case of failure. This is something of a logistical nightmare(or paradise, depending on who you are).

We began by creating a complete CAD model of the wiring harness for the first time in Brown’s FSAE team history. This both significantly improved documentation and organization, and made for a very pretty picture I can show prospective employers(see below). We then created a to-scale projection of the car chassis onto a massive whiteboard, on which we began laying wire.

There are three control centers on the car: the ECU(big black box near the steering wheel), the dashboard MCU, and the relay system. The relay system primarily operates on 12V, while both the dashboard MCU and the ECU work on 5V.

We began by laying all of the wires which would connect the ECU to the various 5V sensors and actuators on the car. This alone took ~200 hours of work between 8 or so people. We then redesigned and laid wire for the relay system. This system supplies high current 12V power to the fuel pump, fan, starter motor, and several other 12V sensors on the car. It makes use of 4 independent relays, 3 kill switches and 3 differently fused power lines in order to meet the FSAE competition requirements. Beyond laying wire, we also needed to redesign the physical mounting of the relays. To do this, I designed, 3D printed, then painted the relay holder pictured below.

The final control center on the car is the dashboard MCU - more on that below!