Our first major project of 2020 was to run our first "C Programming for Embedded Systems" course. This one day event was attended by engineers working on a variety of embedded software projects.
C remains the most widely used programming language for embedded systems, but the language has many pitfalls and even many experience engineers don't fully appreciate some of the issues they can run in to — our course was focussed on developing best-practice and showing our delegates some of the things they should never do.
The course was attended by a group of enthusiastic engineers from a range of embedded backgrounds and feedback from the day was incredibly positive — we'll definitely be looking to run more in future.
Electric Innovation have recently undertaken a challenging project, requiring us to design a modular amplifier.
The challenge was to come up with a "stackable" design that would allow both current and voltage ratings to be increased by using multiple modules. In addition, the design was required to meet strict limits on output distortion under a wide range of loading conditions.
The final design was a 100 W MOSFET-based bridge amplifier design which could easily be connected in parallel with other modules, making the current rating easily scalable. Allowing the voltage rating to be increased was a little more challenging — we solved this problem by allowing the two sides of the bridge be supplied separately and using the output of another module.
In early 2019, Electric Innovation partnered with University College Dublin’s Formula Student team.
Run by the IMechE, Formula Student is Europe’s most established educational engineering competition. It was the first time in over 15 years students from UCD had entered a team in the competition, which is entered by universities from the UK and the rest of the world, including many with excellent reputations for engineering.
Having built their car – itself an impressive achievement – the team headed to Silverstone, where they finished in the top 10 of all competitors in the electric vehicle category.
Electric Innovation are incredibly proud of the team’s achievements and very pleased that we could contribute to their success.