Vehicle Control Unit (VCU)
Designed the VCU in Altium Designer with a teammate and brought it up. This board processes sensor data from the front of our FSAE car and drives the dash display.
- Processes throttle position, brake pressure, steering position and controls the car's buzzer
- Controls car's dash buttons and safety LEDs
- Includes mount for a Raspberry Pi 3, used to drive a custom dash display through HDMI
The Old Boards
The old DCU and VCU split the driver controls and front sensor processing between two boards, and both contained many outdated circuits and sensors that had not been used in many seasons. Because of their similarities, the two were merged into one board with all unnecessary circuits removed.
The 2025 VCU
- Replaced the BeagleBone with a Raspberry Pi for dash control: far better community and display support, with the dash UI written in Python
- Test points across the board, so signals can be probed in place
- Smaller form factor than the two boards it replaced
- Standardised TE AMPSEAL connectors
Bringup and Validation
The main bringup was done on bench: MCU connection, power rails, and the Raspberry Pi booting. The board then went into the 2024 car through an adaptor harness I built, which connects the new board into the old car's existing harness. The sensors and buttons were all verified there.
