Total cost for the weekend should be around $150 per person, though you
could probably get that down a bit with some shoping around for hotels or
sharing with more people (I'm personally shooting for 3/room).
On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 10:32 PM, Joachim Hall <jjoachimhall@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
About how much will each person need to chip in to pay for gas, hotel,
food, etc?
Thanks!
Joachim
On Jun 27, 2015 3:28 PM, "Elijah Richter" <elirichter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It's that time again folks, we need to get prepared for the Detroit Power
Wheels race!
This is a long email but there are many opportunities for people to help
on on the project and we are going to need a lot of help to make a good
showing at Detroit.
The car is in a state that it can be raced as is, but there are several
things that need to be done if we want to be competitive. Here is the list
of stuff in order of importance that I think needs to get done for Detroit:
- *Need list of people going* - We've been accepted to the event, but
I now need to give them a list of who needs tickets. By default, we are
allocated 6 tickets, but we can request more or work with other teams that
have extras if necessary.
- *Need to book hotel rooms* - I'm going to book a room for myself
and Chad, plust up to 1 additional person, let me know if you would like a
spot in that room, otherwise I will leave booking up to you. I just sent
an
email to see if there are any official hotels for the faire, I will update
once I get an answer to this.
- *Need a team manager *- I'm going to be spending a lot of time on
the autonomous project, so it would be great if someone could step in to
do
things like make sure parts are ordered (e.g., tires, batteries etc.),
tools and spares are packed, and manage the pit. This could be a single
person or a manager and delegates, I'll leave it to whoever takes this
role
to figure out responsibilities. This will be even more important for the
NYC race when I'll likely be fighting the robot most of the weekend.
- *Speed up car* - Our current motor has proven quite reliable and I
would like to retain it for at least this season, but I think we can do
some things to get a bit more speed out of it. I think that the motor has
more power to give, but our batteries can't supply the required current.
To
fix this, we can either look at different battery technology, or try a
boost cap(s) to makeup for the voltage droop when under full load. I think
the latter would be easier and cheaper to implement, but if anyone can
come
up with an affordable solution with new batteries, please bring it up.
Keep
in mind we are limited in battery technology to the following:
- SLA (Marine labeled sealed lead acid, Absorbed Glass Mat )
- LiFePO4 (Pre Approved Brands: A123, CALB, & Headway)
- NiCd
- NiMh
- *Clean up car* - body panels could really use a re-paint and better
mounting, rear vents need to be re-built. I can take care of this stuff.
- *Clean up train and shrink for transport* - We put a lot of effort
into the train and people will get a huge kick out of it, but right now it
takes two cars to transport with little room for anything else and isn't
practical to take. There isn't much we can do to shrink the main trailer
part, but we can probably do something clever to fold the cab, which would
hopefully be enough to get it into one car. Assuming we can figure out how
to get it there, we need to fix the smokestack and build something for the
central barrel.
- *Improve brakes* - The brakes work OK on the car and stop it fast
enough, but they are difficult to balance and tend to drag. It would be
great if we could put together a hydraulic system for the car that uses
the
current mounting points, or at least requires minimum modification. If we
can get a solid plan for this, I would love to get it on the car.
- *Lighting* - functional headlights and taillights would be awesome.
We can easily throw lights on the car, but the difficulty is making the
lights look like the real car. For this to really look right, we will
probably need to build custom housings for both the headlights and
taillights.
Please feel free to add to this list or discuss any of the topics.
-Eli
