The SpaceX Hyperloop Challenge 2018 is scheduled for July 22nd this summer, and a team we are sponsoring is one of the competitors. Sounds like a good beginning for one of our Developer's Crush stories.
Éirloop - 500km/h in a pod
Éirloop is a team of Irish engineering students that contacted us a month ago with the request for sponsorship.
With a dream of building a hyper-speed transport system and lots of knowledge at hand, the Éirloop team seem more than ready to enter this competition.
Most of the team members come from Dublin (Dublin City University, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Dublin Institute of Technology, and more). Their plan is to build the fastest pod in the Space X Hyperloop Challenge this summer. The highest speed their pod has achieved so far is 531km/h. For comparison sake, a formula one car goes around 380hm/h.
So, we were more than happy to donate our products to this amazing project.
Why they like Click boards and more
Akhil, from the Éirloop team, was nice enough to give us an interview, answer a few questions about the objective of the Space X Hyperloop Challenge, and share his thoughts on Click boards:
1. When did you hear about MikroElektronika for the first time?
"We at Éirloop heard about MikroE for the first time couple of months ago through a sponsor of ours who stocked Click boards, RS Components. They recommended the Click board system to us and it seemed perfect for our needs so we decided to revamp our system to use the MikroE products."
2. Why do you like using Click boards?
"We like click boards because of the integrated system they are part of, the plug and play aspect of the MikroBUS system which allows for incredibly easy set up of the click boards and neat wiring of our pod control systems which we know will be very important for the safety and testing of our system. The click boards are also really awesome because of their great documentation and compatibility with systems ranging from Arduino boards to Linux SBCs which gives us the flexibility to control our pod exactly how we need, to ensure maximum performance. As well as all that, the click boards themselves are very well designed and we know they will be reliable, something that is very important when you have a pod travelling at 500km/h!"
3. How did do our products fit in the story of the Éirloop?
"MikroE products are very important in the story of Éirloops journey to SpaceX, they are integral to our pod control systems which make up the brains of our pod. We will be using click boards to monitor everything from the temperature to orientation of our pod and it will be the responsibility of the click boards to switch the signals that will accelerate our pod to 500km/h."
4. Do you have a favorite product maybe?
"The DAC click is our favorite product as we are using it for the throttle control signal and we love how precise a signal it can output, this is really great as it allows us to configure the throttle curve for maximum speed with great accuracy."
5. What are you hoping to achieve with the project?
"Éirloop is here to show the amazing things a group of committed, hardworking engineering students are capable of, accelerate the development of the Hyperloop as the future of transport and we are going to show the world that the Hyperloop is not going to be just for larger countries like the US, France, and India, but will also be benefiting those in smaller countries like Ireland and Serbia!"
Future of transport
It seems that Elon Musk's dream of hyperloop
Imagine traveling in a tube held in a partial vacuum, 600kmh, on your morning commute. You could get there much faster than before, to say the least.
But what appears as a more probable outcome is that this type of technology is first going to be used for transportation of cargo, rather than people. A hyperloop network could mean that you order something online and get it the same day. After all, we are living in a fast-paced world, people are expecting a fast service in everything.
We hope that the Éirloop team is going to add to the knowledgebase of hyperloop travel, and let's be honest, we are rooting for them to win. Stay tuned for July 22nd, and we'll let you know how the competition went and who won.
For more information about Éirloop see their official page.
Yours sincerely,
MikroElektronika
