Electrical Systems

E-Systems coordinate the flow of information and power between all the boat's components, by developing custom PCBs and implementing electrical infrastructure, serving as the vital bridge between hardware and software.

At the heart of E-Systems lies the power distribution board, which routes power at appropriate and precise voltage levels to our boat's low-power components including microcontrollers, our kill switch relay, and our transceiver. The board takes an input of 14.8V from our BlueRobotics Lithium-Ion battery, which is then routed through an input protection IC, ensuring that our sensitive components are not exposed to overvoltage or a surge of current. Next, voltage regulators step down the input voltage to 12V and 5V for the components mentioned above. The power distribution system also holds a 14.8V to 24V boost converter, along with power over ethernet capabilities to facilitate the delivery of power and data to our onboard bullet antenna, which is connected through Wi-Fi to an onshore computer.

Safety Feature

Another critical power system E-systems is responsible for is our killswitch, a needed safety feature for our high-power electronics. Our killswitch PCB is a power distribution that takes input from a 20V drill battery, and features a two-form 45A/50A switching relay, which allows us to kill our thrusters and robotic motors with the press of a button. Large power planes are stitched together with vias to facilitate the large peak current draw, and keep temperature rises low. When the kill button is pressed, the relays are flipped and a MOSFET is turned on, allowing current to flow from the drain to the source and sending a 5V signal to our microcontroller, letting it know that the killswitch was activated. This system also uses a charge pump to boost a GPIO output from our microcontroller to 12V, letting us have digital-physical kill capabilities.

Beyond power, E-Systems oversees communication, selecting and implementing transceivers and microcontrollers, including an inhouse designed microcontroller PCB based around a RP2040 chip. These devices facilitate remote control capabilities, and ensure that all of the intricate control pathways between the computer and the motors are operating smoothly.

Looking into the future we are excited to integrate sensors and controllers for our advanced capabilities on Robotics, such as the robotic arm, and we have already designed a custom power distribution system for the robotics components. The electrical team is also working on interesting new circuit board designs, such as custom ESCs and a Battery Monitoring System.