Solar Powered Vechile Using a Capsaitor

Today you will be able to read tgrough some simply steps on how we have created a solar powerd vehicle that uses a capsitor to store and realse its energy. This build will include using coding to allow for the capsitr not to waste all the built up energy at once but rather pause when it reaches bellow a certain point.

Supplies needed to make this solar vechile include

• Chassis
• - 2 Large peices of 4mm thick cardbord
• - super glue
• Wheels
• - a Material to 3D print with
• - A 12V motor
• Front steering
• - 4 plastic front wheels 2 or two diiferent sizes
• -1 7cm Axel
• - 1 small plastic peice to cover the axel
• Other parts
• - 1 mirco bit
• - one MPP controller
• 1 campsiotr
• 1 explnsion board
• 1 blue steering peice
• 1 solar pannel
• Many zipties
• Double sisded tape
• Hot glue

The First thing you want to do to start creating your solar vehicle is, creating the chassis to do this you will need to create a design within a digital software we used onshape to produce your design. For our chassis we made it 25cm in hight and 15cm in width. Our design has 4 horizontal rectangular cut outs to allow for assembling, and 2 large rectangles cut out at the can roughly 7.5cm in length to allow for the wheels to fit it. After creating your design similar to the one in the photo above you will then want to print it onto around 4mm thick cardboard and you will want to print two of those. With the two pieces you will then want to super glue them together on top of eachother, this will allow some studurdness within your chassis base.

To create your Rear wheels you will want to use an application such as onshape to create a Design for the back wheels that will be run by the motor. For our wheels we made them 5.7 cm in diameter to allow them to work in many environments as the smaller the wheels the harder it will be on non flat environments. The wheels have holes all throughout the inside as seen above to allow for minimal weight as the more weight there is the more energy that will be consumed to run the vehicle. When making your design ensure that the wheels will have a piece that sticks out where it attaches into the motor so that the wheels do not rub against the chassis ultimately slowing your vehicle down. The measurements for that piece is 6mm wide by 4mm in height. 

To attach your two back wheels to your chassis you are going to want to use double sided tape and tape the bottom of your 70 mA at 12V motor to the piece of cardboard in between the two large rectangles where your wheel will be placed. you will then want to secure this with two zip ties to stop the motor from potentially moving anywhere. You will then want to attach the wheels one on either side of the motor to the little white pieces that stick out. (keep in mind you wheels should look bigger than in that photo)

To start wiring up your vehicle you should start by

• Get your MPP Controller and your Capacitor and connect the black wire to the negative Lithium battery IN and then connect the red wire to the positive Lithium battery IN on the MPP Controller
• Place the red wire from your solar panel into the positive 5v solar insert on the MPP and screw down and then doing the same thing with black black wire expect putting it into the negative 5v solar insert
• Use a Jaw clip wire Clipping the black wire capacitor to the negative insert in the expansion board (third picture)
• Then attach the red and black wire of the motor to the 2 spots in the M1 section of the board ensuring they are screwed down tightly
• Place the 3 pins into the bread board as seen in photo
• place a Jaw clip on either side of the pin going horizontally and place the other sides of both jaw clips into either end of the micro bit (one in each)
• Place one more jaw clip on the pin end furthest away from the other two jaw clips and attach the other end to the red wire of the capacitor.

In following all these steps and the pictures provided you should be able to have a functioning circuit so that when the light hits the solar panel the energy coming through that solar panel will charge up into the capacitor and then once charged past 3.8 the energy will be released therefore allowing the motor to start spinning the wheels.

Follow the code provided within the pictures that you will download onto your micro bit. This code enables your car to perform as best as possible. The method behind this code allows your motor to run while the stored voltage in a capacitor is above 3.8 and to stop when it reaches anything below. The reason we code it this way is once the capacitor gets below this amount the time taken to recharge drastically increases therefore worsening the performance of your vehicle as well as making it less efficient.

To create the front wheels we started off by using 2 plastic wheels and connecting them one on either side but before contacting the second wheel you want to add a piece of plastic around the plastic axle to allow something for the steering blue steering piece to. To then attach the front wheels to the chassis you will want to hot glue the blue steering piece to the chassis where the arrow points in the picture and the tape and zip tie the other end to the plastic piece that goes around the axle.

Assebling all the wiring and boards onto your chassis can really be done in any way as there is no spesicfic order or spot besides the motor that these things need to be placed althought it is important that where ever you place the peices to make sure that the weight distrabution on chassis is as even as possible as this will help the car go at fast as possible and will assist with steering as there won't be unbalenced weight throughout the vehicle. To sucrue your pieces all you should need is double sided tape and zipties. Here is an idea above of how we assembleid all our peices