What a year it has been in the shop! From massive battery upgrades to autonomous driving AI, we have accomplished some huge milestones this school year. Here is a look back at the most significant projects from the 2025-2026 robotics and engineering season. The Golf Cart’s Power Overhaul Without a doubt, the most time-consuming (and occasionally terrifying) project this year was replacing the old, sulfated lead-acid batteries in the Ford Think golf cart with a custom 24S 72V LiFePO4 battery array.

This post will be a summary of my past two weeks, as I didn’t end up creating a post last week. Overall, there was a lot of progress made on the golf cart’s AI system and also the STM32 ROV board that I have been developing. The version two of the STM32BOBBY boards arrived in the mail on Monday and I got straight to work placing the microscoping components on the board carefully.

This week was very exciting, as we got the golf cart put back together and working! Although the batteries still don’t seem like they are at 100%, they were good enough for us to drive around for a good long while! As you can see in the photo below, the charger is charging the batteries properly (unlike how it had various results leading to various states of charge amongst cells).

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As reluctant as I was to do so, I took off all the battery terminals on the Ford Think’s battery pack for the trillionth time. I wasn’t planning on having to do this, however some of the connections between batteries were so poor (either due to oxidization or loose connections) which caused OVP and UVP to trip on the BMS when charging or discharging. I decided to put in the work and take everything apart and clean things thoroughly.

This week was spent mostly with tweezers and a soldering iron trying to place tiny components onto a tiny circuit board. My custom made STM32BOBBY boards finally came back from JLCPCB and so did the components I ordered for it from DigiKey. I opened things up and the parts looked way smaller than I expected them to be. I could easily fit ten or fifteen of these dudes on my pinky without a problem.

This week I shifted gears a bit, and moved away from the golf cart project. I really felt like I needed a break from the battery system and all that has been going on for a week, so I decided to pick up another quick project to finish in the week. Originally, I started by working on a STM32 breakout board for Alachie and BOBROV (read more on the sunk robotics page).

This blog contains two weeks of work, as I never ended up presenting it on Friday like usual. Week of 03/16/26 This week was extremely short for me. I was only in shop for two days. Monday I was welcomed with some errors on my PC complaining about BitLocker which had apparently encrypted my entire hard drive and refused to let me use it without some magic key. I spent a solid period attempting to bypass this restriction with some advice from Andrew, but I realized I could obtain the magic key it wanted from my Microsoft account.

On Monday, I realized that I was over half-way charging all the batteries. As I was charging, I realized that the current was tapering off faster on these final cells (meaning they were charging faster) which either meant they were already almost full from the start, or they were damaged. I was really hoping they were simply almost full, which would have made this week a nice walk in the park, but turns out I couldn’t have been further from wrong.

This week I decided to get some professional advice for the Golf Cart. Luckily, Mr. Christy has a friend and master of all electronics engineering and alumn from MIT. He graciously came over to the shop on Wednesday to look at the battery system on the Golf Cart and helped me get a better grasp on what could be happening with the cells and lack balancing. I learned that by charging each cell individually up to their 100% SOC (3.

Finally, a few weeks without damage! This post contains content spanning across a few weeks of time. Week 02/09/26 This week (02/09/26) was a commitment to get the broken battery out, new battery in, and BMS balancing everything safely. Although we have said this the past 3 weeks, this week we were determined to get things done without issues. To start off the week, we had to identify what was making the BMS and batteries upset in the first place.

This week felt very similar to the last few. One step forward, two steps back. Although we received the new and improved [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DL349YSV/ref=twister_B0GFD4MFG5?_encoding=UTF8&th=1](Daly Smart BMS) rated for 300A and automatic active cell balancing, we still managed to mess things up. To begin the week, Jonas and I reinstalled the new battery (replacing the one that was damaged last week) which required more physical labor than expected. Originally, we thought we could push the new battery in, but the minor swelling from the other cells made it extremely difficult to fit them.

This week was another short one. We had two snow-days on Monday and Tuesday so we were reduced to three working days. Like last week, this one was full of horror and dumb mistakes made that set the whole golf cart project further back in time. On Wednesday, Mr. L had Jonas and I shovel out the driveway to allow for the mandoor to open fully. This ended up taking longer than we planned, so we spent a decent chunk of our shop time shoveling and throwing snowballs.

This week was a very short week, due to MLK day and a professional development day for the teachers. Nonetheless, there was still plenty of time to break things. In two days, Jonas and I managed to set back our progress on the golf cart by over 6 months. The first issue we discovered was that one of the batteries was shorted to the frame ground. Although not immediately dangerous, it increases the risk of shorting the entire LiFePO4 battery pack.

I spent this week working on various projects and side tasks. On Monday, Mr. Christy needed someone to assemble the newly purchased DIY reflow oven kit (EZ Make Oven). We have had a small countertop convection oven in the shop ready to be used for this project for several years now, so these were the final components needed to get things up and running. With the help of Jonas, we got the hardware setup complete in about one period.

Ever since I got my USDX+ QRP Radio I have needed some way to reliably power it. Originally, I started with a random 12v wall wart that I found from an old router. I saw that it could deliver 3A so I thought it would have been the perfect match… but I was wrong The USDX+ has an SDR receiver and is very prone to interference (not just RF but power line noise too) which I found very noticeable on my trip to AZ.