BUGG - I

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  Free Roll Sector Display

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  Start Display

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  Overall Display with Sector Times

Preface

Buggy is a CMU Tradition. Piloted by a driver and pushed through five hills by five separate pushers, the gravity pod can reach up to 40mph during the roll. Making this possible is the team, some with over 60 members, who work tirelessly over the course of an year to make sure they get the fastest time on the course come Raceday in April, a feat usually taking 2 minutes. With the nature of how competitive it is, you would imagine that drivers have an awareness for how fast their time is at practice. Short answer, no. Secluded from the outside world, the driver gauges on their metric to see what they believe works and is the fastest line. BUGG-I is a product that provides quantitative data about their lap time and sector times, along with other important pieces of data that drivers can use to improve and rule the course on raceday.

Inspiration

We both are part of a Buggy team.

What it does

BUGG-I keeps track of the hill times (where there are 5 of them, 2 going up Tech street and 3 going up Frew street) and the freeroll time (going down Schenly Drive). The mechanism times each of these sectors, and displays them concurrently with the record sector time for reference. At the end of the race, it will display all the sector times so that the driver can note it down and use their experience as a reference point for the next time they roll. If it was better than the course record of 2:02, it will flash bright red.

How we built it

We built it using a breadboard and Arduino.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we both ran into was our lack in experience. Both of us were first time hackers for hardware, and it was the first time I have actually hacked in person. It was tough learning how to proceed at every step of the way, but it was very worth it for what we gained. Another constraint was the size of the screen, only being able to display 2 lines of 16 characters.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating this project, and of its possible implications. It is very simple, though it has the potential to revolutionize Buggy, one of CMU's most important and long lasting traditions.

What we learned

Time management with homework and general debugging

What's next for BUGG - I

Practical application during practice rolls on the weekends. Additional features including but not limited to concurrently displaying the personal record sector times, the current pusher name, a speed display, and many more!

Built With

• arduino