Nathan Cheek

RapidHarness is a software solution for designing and documenting wiring harness. My team was looking to start using a better wiring harness documentation system than the EAGLE schematics we used in the past, so we decided to try RapidHarness (disclosure: they provided us a free professional subscription for educational use).

While using RapidHarness over a few months to document several harness designs for my team, I had a chance to play with a number of its features. I was fairly happy with the resulting design printouts, but along the way I found a number of problems, mostly things that slowed me down as I tried to use the software. I would recommend that anyone interested in this software compare alternatives before settling on it.

Building on our 2018 success, HyTech Racing has once again won first place in Formula Hybrid’s international electric vehicle competition. Wrapping up my second and final year as Team President, I was excited to see the hard work of our team pay off with excellent results in all static and dynamic competition events.

With a weight of 368 lb, our vehicle was the lightest at the competition. This light and high-performing vehicle design was made possible through the team’s iterative design process that we have focused on developing over the past 3 years.

We’ve had a bit of media coverage:

• Georgia Tech Article
• Dartmouth Article
• Georgia Tech Video

This spring semester I worked with a friend to build an updated Raspberry Pi Zero CAN Shield for our ECE4180 final class project. Building off of my CAN Shield project from last summer, we were able to fit a standard DB9 connector onto the board without compromising the board dimensions. We wanted to add this connector since it is a common standard for CAN Bus connectivity, and by using a smaller CAN controller chip package as well as removing a duplicate connector, we were able to make it happen. More information about this project can be found in our writeup here.

This school year, I redesigned HyTech Racing’s Formula SAE Brake System Plausibility Device (BSPD). Formula SAE Electric has a ruleset which competing teams must follow, and the BSPD is one of the required safety systems defined in these rules. The BSPD is a safety mechanism to prevent a runaway vehicle. It has two sensor inputs. One senses how much current is traveling from the high voltage battery pack into the motor. The other senses whether the brakes are being actuated. The idea is that if the motor keeps outputting torque after the driver has let off the accelerator pedal, they can press the brake pedal, which will initiate a hardware shutdown of the high voltage system, cutting off power to the motor.

This May, my team won first place in the electric category of Formula Hybrid, an international Formula Student vehicle engineering competition. Georgia Tech’s ECE department recently published an article I wrote about the team’s success this year:

https://ece.gatech.edu/news/2023/12/georgia-tech-wins-top-honors-formula-hybrid-competition

Dartmouth also published an article about the event.