While presenting the car at NIWeek, some members in the press spoke to us about the Samsung Solorean, UT Solar Vehicles Team’s latest solar car.  An online video program for engineers called Engineering TV did a full-blown interview with me.

Part 1: http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/09/08/university-of-texas-solar-vehicle-team.aspx

Part 2:http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/09/09/samsung-solorean-solar-car.aspx

To some extent, I wish that the people who came up with the designs were able to be there and talk about their work.  Nevertheless, I am there to show that I am proud of what my team did because engineering marvels are made in teams.

Approximately four months ago, I took the leap of faith and decided on helping my team in its bid to enter the North American Solar Challenge 2008. During final exams and in the two months after finals, I spent 60-70 hours each week working on the project, including weekends, nights, and even some all-nighters. We went to Cresson, TX on Thursday despite receiving the news that we were too late to have our car undergo scrutineering and that we cannot enter the event to show our car and to try to make good on our promise to give the organizer a “Texas-style dinner.” Now that I am back at home, I would like to take the opportunity to address some questions that some of you might have:

What happened? In a team consisting mostly of electrical engineers, mechanical and aerospace engineers are quite scarce. This caused a significant amount of lag in the building of the suspension. Furthermore, mechanical issues required us to machine more parts, and that could not be done without the use of our big milling machine in PRC (Pickle Research Campus). Nevertheless, if it were not for a new member that came out of nowhere (a Physics Ph. D student), this car would still not be driveable.

What were your contributions during the summer? While I consider myself as someone who implemented someone’s design and a troubleshooter, I was primarily responsible for the team’s logistics, which are “those little things” that are necessary for ensuring that everybody is taken care of and that we can actually go on the trip and return. If you want a comprehensive list of the things I did, I:

• Acted as an intermediary in the signing of the participation agreement between the event officials and UT’s business agreements department. This took four months and endless emails to straighten out.
• Obtained general liability and auto insurance for the event.
• Obtained decals for the trailer and team uniforms for the personnel. The biggest roadblock was that UT’s trademark and licensing department refused to allow corporate logos and the UT trademarks appearing side-by-side.
• Received my amateur radio operating license, as well as first aid and CPR certification.
• Gained familiarity with LabVIEW’s real-time/FPGA and PDA additions
• Performed some final assembly procedures

During the event, what did you notice? I saw some great ideas for how to make our car more water-resistant and a car with an absolutely brilliant body. More importantly, I noticed the amazing amount of help the teams give each other in resolving issues. It was exactly what I wanted to see: Even as we are all competitors, we are all ultimately friends in pursuit of one goal.

What frustrated you most? Dealing with trademark and licensing brought out the bureaucracy’s absurdity and took the Texas fight out of me. While we have some corporate supporters, we also received a significant amount of support from the various departments in UT. Since trademark and licensing refused to make an exception in the name of PR, I was forced to remove anything having to do with UT and give all the recognition to our corporate supporters.

As much as I wanted to recognize all our supporters and pay our dues to them, I removed the UT entities from the layouts, as seen above, and resigned myself to let the bureaucracy shoot themselves in the foot. That is, UT will not be recognized and I am able to face any music with confidence. Of course, my teammates and I had some other funny (and/or immature) suggestions:

• Replace orange with maroon and call ourselves “t.u.”
• Call ourselves United Technicians
• Replace all the UT logos with an image placeholder you’d see when your browser can’t find an image
• [Implemented] Replace the Longhorn on Samsung Solorean’s antennas with a Jack ball.

This frustrated me most because I considered the changes a waste of time – for every minute I had to make revisions, I was unable to work on the electrical system.

This is what you could overlook if you are pressed for time.

Why did you do this even though you know that you have a low chance of success? Besides practicing what I preached (which is not being a fair-weather fan), there are several reasons I signed on:

1. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There are not many people who can say that they took part in building a solar car.
2. I have been with this team since they started considering building the next car, and I would like to see the project all the way to its end.
3. I felt that if companies believed enough in us to give us money or services, then I should place my confidence in the team as well.

Despite not reaching the ultimate prize even after having paid quite the price (in terms of money and health), I hope you are convinced that I received a significant amount of work experience despite not being paid.

A view of the cRIO box

What happens next? There is a great deal of unfinished business on the team, and I have every intention of finishing them in a timely fashion. Quitting the team is out of the question – the team is in a better state than when I found it, and there are still improvements ahead. I am now convinced that the solar car class is indeed a great recruiting tool, and it is being cross-listed across the aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering departments.

The car fired up for the first time Wednesday, and I was able to drive it in the Pickle Research Campus parking lot. This experience in itself made this entire journey worthwhile. As I sit here, I have no regrets over my decision. If there are any questions, please write it in the comments section, and I will address it in another blog entry. But as long as we have the money, as long as we have the people, and as long as we have an event, we will keep on trying. To my friends: Thank you all for your support in my endeavor.  To my teammates: Thank you for your time, effort, and patience while you worked with me.  To our corporate sponsors: Thank you for giving us the resources necessary to pursue our passions.  Finally, to Professor Hallock: Thank you for your guidance and (seemingly) infinite patience even as I dropped the ball during the three years of this journey.

So far, I have been working as hard as possible on the high voltage system, but with the deadline looming closer and closer, I had to switch gears.  If anything, I have started to work more hours.  My schedule now looks like this:

• Morning - 5 PM: Logistics work, with 1 hr. lunch break
• 5 PM - 7 PM: Dinner in apartment (I had an eating-out spree last month, so I definitely need to pull back some)
• 7 PM - 11 PM: Work on high voltage system and NI CompactRIO

It is quite a tiring schedule, and I wish more people would help with this project.  I also (somewhat foolishly) signed myself up to give high school students some presentations via the Women in Engineering Program (WEP).  I signed up because not many student organizations are active during the summer.  More importantly, I believe that it is important that I pass the baton to a group of younger students.  In any case, I followed through today with the presentations and learned that I love audience-presenter interaction!  Besides talking about the solar car team, I gave them some takeaways for their education now:

1. Be involved: It will give you the chance to learn things that are not in the books and give you hands-on experience with what has been discussed in the books.
2. Take pride in your work: You will set higher standards for yourself and be able to achieve more.
3. Don’t be a fair-weather fan in projects: Never, ever let a project fail without putting up a good fight and giving it everything you got.  You just might be the person who will make or break it.
4. Be patient: Innovation rarely happens overnight, and what you do may contribute to something bigger.
5. Take chances!  Make mistakes!  Learn from them!: Innovation does not happen without people pushing their luck, blowing something up (by accident), falling flat on their faces, etc.
6. Your education is a two-way street: Interact with your teachers, and you will be able to stand on the shoulders of giants.
7. Consider Every Option (even if it is not engineering): Find your passion and pursue it.  Choose a career path that makes you happy.  There are many needs that need to be fulfilled, and many of these needs require people with special qualifications.

Here are just a few pictures from this week:

Throughout the summer, I have been working 70+ hours per week on the solar car project.  It may seem like I have no social life, but nobody took me up on my offer to meet up — I’m on campus and can always spare an hour or two with you.  While on campus, I get the chance to see the demolition of the ESB.  Although they did not employ the typical explosives technique, their method is just as interesting: They are using a backhoe to take out the facade.  While doing so, however, they are spraying water to keep the debris and dust from affecting all of campus.  Here is just a picture of the process:

Although the car is coming along at a decent pace, I think it could be better and some people could be clocking in more hours.  Last week, we used one of the molds to make the lower portion of the mold.  Here’s a picture of the first steps:

Meanwhile, I have been working on logistics and the car’s electrical system (I am an EE, you know).  During this weekend, I pulled two all-nighters to help a friend get the National Instruments compactRIO-based battery management system working even better.  The issue that plagued us was the latency between user input and system response.  My teammate assigned the problem to me and warned me that it could cost me one week of work.  I slept on it last night and solved the problem in the matter of three hours.  By getting the hint that it is a network issue, I pulled out WireShark and started sniffing traffic between the compactRIO and the computer.  It turns out that having the FPGA’s front panel open overwhelmed the compactRIO’s network port and caused the latency.  After downloading the FPGA to the board and running only the realtime program on the computer, everything ran like butter.  When I talked about this with another professor I know, he brought up the question of how one can go about teaching how to troubleshoot.  I do not know whether this can be taught, but I do know that a good troubleshooter is well on its way to being a good engineer.

In one of the all-nighters, I encountered one of my most embarrassing moments.  The faculty advisor wanted to measure voltage across the battery pack.  Since I was slightly incoherent, I handed him the multimeter, but it was set to measure current.  Since current is measured through a shunt resistor in the meter, it would effectively be a short circuit.  Unfortunately, the faculty advisor did not catch my error and proceeded to make the measurement.  Instead, he received a very large arc as if he was welding something.  Fortunately, the system received only cosmetic damage and the multimeter is still fine.  The only loss was a multimeter lead, which was vaporized in the arc.

It has been about a week since I headed back to Austin to work with the solar car team.  Ahead of me is the biggest gamble I am taking.  With me are some of my best friends, who are also working on the car with me, and some of my worst foes, who are preventing the team from entering the race over some legal mumbo-jumbo.  There is still a great amount of work to do, but work is being done a lot faster with no school.

On the electrical side, we now have full battery protection and fan control on the National Instruments CompactRIO!  Although we spent about two days debugging the program when things were abnormal, we managed to get through it.  Here’s a picture of the CompactRIO hooked up to the batteries:

Amidst the mad end-of-semester, final examination rush, we started the process of creating the carbon fiber body.  Saturday was our moment of truth as we pulled the body out of the mold.  Although it took 8 people to get the body out, it takes only one person to lift the entire body:

This is unbelievable!  My spring break really went as planned!  Upon my return to Austin…

Monday: Took my friends around Austin to eat and check out where I study.  The roads definitely require a lot of patience.  During the walking tour of campus, they went to an old video games store and a comic book store.  That definitely made their trip.

Tuesday: Worked all day at Pickle Research Campus with the solar car team to put the foam blocks for the upper portion of the Samsung Solorean’s body together.  One of the challenges we are facing is aligning the blocks perfectly in two axes at the same time on an uneven floor (height and length).  Once finished, it looks approximately like this:

Wednesday, Thursday: Went to YPS Facility Services to help sand foam blocks that will become the mold for the bottom portion of the Samsung Solorean’s body.  Professor Hallock and I were sanding practically nonstop for at least five hours each day.

Friday: Edit the mechanical report to ensure that it has everything NASC headquarters asked for and that it is formatted well.  Yes, this took all day.

Now: Slept in, did some homework, and continuing to study.

I’m now back in Sugar Land, TX, and I will be back for only the weekend.  Afterwards, I’m returning to UT to work with the solar car team.  Many people tell me, “Wow, that sucks!” but I think quite the contrary.  I am passionate about getting this car built; and even though I haven’t done much in the way of design, I have devoted at least a hundred hours this semester to working with logistics, documentation, IT, and outreach while maintaining my school-social balance.  As far as this weekend is concerned, I suspect the schedule looks something like this, with studying and more solar car team stuff wherever I can fit it:

Saturday:

• Calculate the tab with my parents
• Teach little brother how to blow the dust out of his laptop
• Remove gunk from my littlest brother’s computer
• Do FAFSA forms in front of my parents

Sunday:Celebrate Dad’s birthday

Monday:Day of fun with two very close friends while returning to Austin.

Cleaning up my little brothers’ computers reminds me of why I love Linux so much.  In Windows, we are constantly bombarded with pop-ups from the diverse range of software installed asking you to update or to deliver some message/ad.  Also, it continues to baffle me as to how a limited user should be allowed to make global changes to a computer.  Microsoft, there is a reason why I would want to place a user on a “limited” account — it’s because I don’t want them installing programs willy-nilly.

For all you fun-loving folks out there, I will have fun… I promise.  I will have fun in the pursuit of my passions.  That road trip to Calgary, AB, Canada IS going to happen!

It has been over two weeks since I wrote in my blog, and it’s amazing just how much happens:

North American Solar Challenge / Internship?
After hearing many, many opinions from a diverse range of people about whether I should participate in the North American Solar Challenge or get an internship, I have decided on participating in the race.  As many people pointed out, it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Additionally, it is a matter of confidence — if Samsung Austin Semiconductor was able to confide in us enough to sponsor us $ 54,000 and provide us with some engineers to help us, placing my confidence in the team is the least I could do.  As I learned in orientation, it is important to place trust in your teammates.  As if that’s not enough, I am now the team leader for the Logistics team, which will steer the course for a smooth rayce through planning ahead.  From the documents I saw from the 2005 rayce, we are ahead of the game!

Senior Design Project
As I may have mentioned, one of my friends recruited me to be on their senior design project team because I’m one of the only people he knows who can “write worth a damn.”  Since his interest is in cars (especially vintage cars), he decided to make an add-on to the open-source MegaSquirt fuel injection system.  In particular, he wants to make a nitrous oxide injection control system.  Since those kits are everywhere and the legalities are questionable (even after consulting the Tarlton Law Library), we decided to switch to making an electronic throttle control system.  Although prevalent in modern cars, there is no aftermarket computer that implements an electronic throttle control, an important building block for cruise control, throttle control, and input stabilization.  When we took this up with a TA, Fred and I had to try hard to not lose our composure because he was stepping all over our project:

First of all, he questioned the product’s marketability.  This was trivial considering that if this product was indeed sold, then it would be the only product available.  While it is true that we are designing something for a niche market, I can easily name some profitable companies with a presence on campus who do cater to niche markets.  He proceeded to say that our project was not enough electrical engineering and more of mechanical engineering.  To me, it does not matter — I am here to learn new things.  What frustrated Fred most was the TA’s repetitive statement that he’s afraid that we will be “wasting one year” over a project only to not get a good grade.  I trust my friend enough to stay on this team and do whatever I can to help him.

Probability = Bad Luck
Last Thursday, the fire alarm went off because the coils on the stove in the kitchen were dirty and smoked the kitchen up.  I was working on probability at that time.  This Tuesday, the fire alarm went off again because of an equipment malfunction.  Guess what I was working on.  This means that I am unable to cook my weekly meals.  Fortunately, I struck a deal with my parents to give me $5/week to eat out (typical meals on the Drag cost $ 6 - $ 7.50)

Falling Flat on my Face
I fell flat on my face on the Power Electronics test Wednesday.  Taking Professor Ambler’s cue to ask people how they think they did for instant feedback, I asked people who I perceived to be smarter than I am, and they fell flat on their faces as well.  I went to the professor’s office hours to ask him how I could study better, but it turns out that even he was not feeling too good about the test.

I moved back to Austin early again to help the solar car team with the Edison Lecture Series. This year’s topic was TV, Image Processing, and Surveillance. People thought it was funny for us to be on display, but solar power is definitely useful when it is impossible to get a connection right off the grid.

This semester, I am taking the following classes:

• EE 351K - Probability and Random Processes
• EE 360 - Special Problems in Electrical Engineering
• EE 362L - Power Electronics
• EE 364D - Introduction to Engineering Design
• EE 366 - Engineering Economics I

As I have said for most of my other semesters, this semester is going to be the hardest yet. However, I somehow manage to make it through each and every one just fine. What is this force? I think this force consists of faith, my willingness to do anything ethical to get my EE degree, and the wonderful people around me. One is rooming with me next year, and another one is teaching me how to build a tube amp and speaker set.

To top off the first week, I went to Bridge Point Elementary with the team to participate in their Science Day. We talked about what we do, solar power, why it is useful, and how electricity works. After the talk, the kids got to wire solar panels to the toy cars. We got the cars from a dollar store; and although the wiring is a trivial task, making sure they work is not!

Fast to fail, fun to diagnose! After all was said and done, we were left with a huge pile of carnage!

Unfortunately, the weather was not very suitable for the cars to go outside and run, so we had to make do with halogen lamps. Nevertheless, the kids had a lot of fun and walked out of the room exclaiming, “That was awesome!”:

Over the past half-month, I have gone through a good bit of stuff. Here is just a small sampling of them:

I. Trip to Topeka
I went to Topeka with the University of Texas Solar Vehicles Team to a get-together of all the solar car teams interested in competing in the 2008 race. We turned a race that was doubtful to happen to something that will definitely happen through our enthusiasm. If you think we are going to build those pancakes again, think again — we have put forth these new rules:

• Upright seating, strobe lights, external emergency disconnects, and daytime running lights are now required for all cars.
• For teams that are able to afford the more expensive gallium-arsenide cells, they are limited to an array size of 6m². However, teams using the regular cells are still allowed 8m².

These rules slow down the cars, make things more of an engineering challenge, and emphasize safety, which is most paramount.

II. Battle of the Buildings
Battle of the Buildings is a Whitis Court tradition where the Residence Hall Council (RHC) puts on a series of events to make the buildings compete against each other. Not only did we have our own versions of Project Runway and Iron Chef, we also had a talent show and some field days. One year brought on so many changes! On the bright side, more residents participated in the program and were very competitive and all the buildings broke a building’s dominance. However, the breaking of this dominance was the result of some changes in the way the events were scored. I was not involved in the scoring process, but I think that the changes took more factors into account and gave buildings with fewer residents a fighting chance. In any case, the results stand thus:

1. LLB
2. LLC
3. LLF (my building!)

III. Heck Week
Last week was another one of those weeks where I have three tests crammed in one week. To compound that, I had two back-to-back tests on Friday. My matricies class troubles me.

IV. Faith in Crises
In politics, I have always seen the attempt to legislate morality as attempts to trap the other party. Well, this time, it looks like the party of “family values” has fallen in their own trap. First, there is Mark Foley, who resigned because of sexually explicit emails to male Congressional pages (reference). To add to this mess, a pastor who strongly condemned homosexuality was retroactively caught for having gay sex and drugs over the past three years (reference).

I will admit that for a few brief moments, I would gloat at the revealing of this hypocrisy. However, I am saddened that we do not have strong-willed people to guide us, that people have fallen to their weakness of will. I am quite sure that the news has shaken the faith of a few. For those people, I have this: Remember that God is perfect and humans are not. There are unfortunate instances where religion will be invoked as rhetorical devices. Your best defense against those would be your convictions and living by them. Embrace and practice what you think is right and reject what you think is wrong.