Chriszuma's Lair

For Kristine, who's accompanied me through the best four years of my life.

Last Updated:

Mods -	September 14 2006
Creations -	September 14 2006
Work Logs -	September 14 2006
Programs -	January 11 2007
Registry Hacks -	September 14 2006
Links -	April 22 2008
Pictures -	February 04 2007

My name is Chris Hammond, and this is my website. Here you will find a selection of the random projects I embark on when I have a little bit too much free time.

Right now it's basically a blog for my adventures on the North American Solar Challenge. (Thus making it a corollary to the team's blog)

I'm a Computer Engineering student at the University of Michigan, and the head power-electrical engineer on the UM Solar Car Team Race Crew. Most of the things on this website (including the website itself) were done during high school; nowadays I spend too much time on the Solar Car to do anything I can post here.

Email: Chriszuma@Gmail.com
AIM: Chriszuma

News and Updates:

The Race -- Owned.
[July 24, 2008 -- 6:39 pm]
Winning feels good.

Winning by an entire race day feels better.

This has been the most amazing thing I've ever been a part of, and likely will be for a while. It taught me, among other things, the importance of "Not Fucking Around." We were NFA in everything we did, and it certainly paid off. We spent 15 minutes on the side of the road the entire race, and it was because the CAN connector on our MPPTs (one of the few electronics we didn't design ourselves) was poorly designed. We were ready for virtually anything to go wrong on the car, with a spare ready to swap in, and a spare for the spare. If we had had Principia's DC-DC converter failure, it would have been a 10-second fix. As it turned out, we did such an NFA job designing everything, we didn't have any problems.

That's just one example of our NFA, others include:
- Testing our suspension by catching air off speed bumps,
- Using so many amber lights that people pull over for us,
- Sending up weather balloons to 40,000 feet,
- Knowing at all times the voltage of every single battery module to the millivolt,
- Getting new suspension parts machined during qualifying so we could swap in a higher torque motor if need be.
- Practicing a motor swap enough to do it in under 6 minutes.
- Being the first team to ever qualify for NASC with a single-wheel-front design, simply because it's more aerodynamic.

It's been a remarkable journey, being on this team, and I've learned so much about engineering, teamwork, human nature, sacrifice, and leadership. Not to mention all of the industry contacts I've accumulated. Alas, it's now time that I take my lessons and move on with my life. I've got two years of school left, and while I probably can't go on any more solar car races, I'm confident that I can do anything.

The Race -- Day 10: Taking off from Medicine Hat
[July 24, 2008 -- 5:36 pm]
[This post was recorded earlier.]
So it's the last day. We're about 8 hours ahead of the second place team (Principia) at this point, because they had a pretty crappy day yesterday. I guess they had some brake scrub caused by a bent rim which caused them to undervoltage a battery module, and then they blew out a DC-DC converter. They did end up rolling into the stage stop without trailering, they just got an hour penalty for showing up late. I have to applaud their "never trailer" policy and unwillingness to give up.

Anyway, we just have to cruise the speed limit to Calgary so nobody can cockblock us and roll across the finish line before us.

12 minutes to Go Time.

The Race -- Day 8: Winnipeg to Regina
[July 21, 2008 -- 1:51 am]
So we're camping about 20 miles outside Regina, having found a pretty sweet charging spot at a lentil farm. Today went nice and smooth, the only problems being staying awake. This is much preferable to any other type of problem.

So far in this leg we've gained about 40 minutes on Principia, and we'll roll into Medicine Hat tomorrow afternoon and find out exactly what our lead is. Then the next morning we cruise into Calgary.

Also, there is a friendly cat at this farm, and I took the opportunity to degrade the credibility of our team's blog: permalink .

Oh, and also the didn't-have-to-trailer club is down to 4 members: Us, Principia, Bochum, and Waterloo.

The Race -- Day 6-7: Sioux Falls to Winnipeg
[July 19, 2008 -- 4:48 pm]
We're in Canadia! We arrived at the stage stop at Red River College today at 11:32, beating Principia by 56 minutes.

We spent 4 minutes off the clock at the border crossing so the international student on our team could get her passport stamped. Also we got to be in the "Morris Stampede" which is apparently a parade to celebrate the dairy industry in the town of Morris (crazy Canadians).

I have definitely noticed an increasing level of stage stops one-upping each other. The first stage stop in Neosho was a parking lot with some tents, and Missorri S&T bought dinner for everyone. Sioux Falls was made into a big deal with police escorts and press, and the city bought us pizza and t-shirts. Here, the college is throwing a BBQ for all the teams, letting us use their computer labs and CNC machine shop, putting on games of floor hockey, and showing a movie. I can't wait to see what Medicine Hat has to offer, and I hear the finish line should be pretty insane.

Anyway, we get to sleep in a hotel again tonight, which should be a nice improvement over the potato farm we camped at last night.

Side story: Ferman was talking to a newspaper and said "It's not like the university expects us to bring home a fifth win," and they quoted him as saying, "The university expects us to bring home a fifth win." I love reporters.

The Race -- Day 5: Waiting in Sioux Falls
[July 18, 2008 -- 3:04 am]
Sioux Falls is pretty cool. Well, except for the slaughterhouse that was upwind of us today. The smell complemented the disturbing squeals nicely.

Oh, also we got some penalties, so Principia technically won this leg of the race. We're still ahead of them overall though. The biggest penalty was an hour because our hydraulic brakes wore out and we drove for a few miles with only regen before stopping. It's a pretty excessive penalty considering we slowed down to about 15 mph, increased our distance, and stopped as soon as we found a suitable location. We can't really fight it though, since it was for "operating an unsafe vehicle" which is technically true even though we did so as safely as possible.

Anyway, we're still leading, we've got a full battery pack, and we're going to keep cruising all the way to Calgary.

The Race -- Day 3-4: Neosho to Sioux Falls
[July 16, 2008 -- 4:41 pm]
Nebraska has to be the hilliest state ever. Day 3 went smoothly, except for the last 15 minutes or so. Because of all the hills, and the fact that we hadn't changed our brake pads after 2 days on the track, our mechanical brakes started failing as the pads wore down to nothing. So we were using mainly regen brakes, and then the motor temp got up to about 103 C (aka 7 degrees from melting), so we stopped for the day just barely within the timeframe you're allowed to stop without penalty. We camped in the parking lot of a Bounce U, which is apparently inflatable fun for all ages.

Then the storm hit. The Base-X shelter stood up to it, but not without the help of 4 team members, 4 sand bags, and 2 bags of 18-inch steel spikes holding down one side of the tent from imploding. Also, camping on concrete sucks.

Today we hit the road early because we stopped early last night, and cruised all the way to Sioux Falls. We didn't get too close to melting the motor, but we did have a lot of fun on the hills around here. Had to use overcurrent regen to keep it under the speed limit a few times, which is actually kind of sweet because you'll see around 4 kilowatts going into the battery pack.

We got into Sioux Falls at 12:35, about an hour ahead of Principia. There are actually people at this stage stop, which is pretty cool. The city is really making a big deal about it, with a police escort, news crews, inflatable Coca Cola tents, and giant crowds. A couple more teams might roll in today, but we're here until Friday morning. You would think that driving a few hundred miles north would help with the temperature, but the Tahoe is telling me it's 101 F outside right now.

Oh, and Chuck Hutchins is buying us dinner tonight, so that'll be sweet.

The Race -- Day 2: Waiting in Neosho
[July 15, 2008 -- 1:12 am]
Today, since we got to the stage stop last night, we basically just sat around all day. We got another morning and evening charge, and the battery pack's about one volt from full.

I went to Lowe's and dropped 80 bucks on hardware to put wheels on the battery lockbox. Now we won't have to carry it and run every time we impound the battery. That is, after I get to installing them.

Now it's sleep time.

The Race -- Day 1: Plano to Neosho
[July 14, 2008 -- 5:53 pm]
Day 1 went very well. We're still out in first, and Principia is about 15 minutes behind us. We were the only two teams to get to the Neosho stage stop on the first day.

The day went pretty smoothly, except we did have to pull over a few times. In the morning we had a problem with our motor controller cutting out, and it was making us incredibly anxious because we couldn't figure out what was causing it. The first time we pulled over, we swapped out the motor controller, but we continued having the same problem. We pulled over again, and I thought to unplug all of the MPPTs' CAN lines to cut down on CAN errors. As it turns out, those stupid connectors were the problem because it worked flawlessly after that.

After we got that sorted, we cruised for the rest of the day, ending up with an average of 41 mph. Mind you, that number would have been a lot higher if we had better sunlight for the first half of the day. We pretty much burned our entire battery pack getting through clouds, until the sun finally came out and we were able to keep going just off array power.

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