Automated Car Sunshade

From February 2016 - June 2016, I worked as the electrical engineer in a team of four people to design an automated car sunshade.  By June, we were able to construct our first prototype using an Arduino as our microcontroller, and 3D-printed parts for the mechanical design.  We demoed our prototype at UC San Diego's Triton Entrepreneur Night, 5/24.  Our company name was Shaze, and we were a part of UC San Diego's Basement program, an incubator for start-ups.

Circuit Prototype

Above you can view a video of the prototype.  Click the jump below for more details.

As a startup company, the main goal that we were trying to solve was the problem of inconvenience.  After doing some research, my teammates were able to determine that the main reason people did not use sunshades is because of how bulky and inconvenient manual sunshades are.  With our design, users would be able to activate and deactivate our automated sunshade with the simple flick of a switch.  The functional block diagram, implemented through a finite state machine in code, can be seen below.

   

Functional Block Diagram

The schematic for the prototype can be found below.  For our initial demo during Triton Entrepreneur Night, we centered our design around an Arduino Uno, powered by an AC adapter.  The main mechanism of the sunshade used a standard DC motor, which was controlled using a full H-Bridge and a gate driver, as shown below.  When the mechanical mechanism reached its limit, a magnet would trigger a reed switch and the Arduino would then proceed to stop the motor.  Following the block diagram above, the sunshade would remain in its position until the button is pressed again.  

Schematic designed in EagleCAD

Unfortunately, this project ended after our demo at Triton Entrepreneur Night.  Given more time, I would have liked to simplify the electrical design by taking advantage of an H-Bridge IC, and further reducing the size of the circuitry using a PCB and SMD components.  Another big part of our design would have been the use of solar power in a consumer version of this product, rather than using a battery or adapter.  Ultimately, I had fun working with my teammates, and learned a lot about electrical design as well as being involved in a startup.