My team, consisting of five senior students and seven junior students, worked on a solar boat to compete in the Elfstedentocht, a traditional Dutch ice-skating marathon adapted for solar-powered boats. This race was organized by The Ultimate Solar Boat Challenge, with the goal of completing the course as quickly as possible using only solar energy harvested by the boat. In 2022, we placed 4th out of 27 teams.
Within the team, I was responsible for telemetry and the electrical system. In my first year, I designed and programmed a circuit board that enabled real-time data monitoring from the shore. Using this data, I collaborated with another team member to develop our race strategy.
In 2023, we focused on redesigning the telemetry system, applying lessons learned from the previous version to create a more modular setup. We rebuilt the system using a Raspberry Pi and integrated Grafana for data visualization. That year, we placed 8th in a combination of agility, endurance, and sprint races.
As I was graduating from high school that same year and preparing to leave the team, I dedicated myself to passing on my knowledge to younger students. With this, I aimed to help establish the ITT (Ichthus Top Talent) team as a consistently top-performing competitor in future races.
I was on the TUSBC journal explaining some of the design choices we made at the very start of the telemetry system. Watch here
