How Innoptus Solar Team managed to win the World Championship by using Marple.

Customer

‍Innoptus Solar Team, a group of 20 engineering students who design and build a solar car every two years to compete in international solar races.

The challenge

‍The team needs to monitor and analyze the data collected from their solar car during the races, such as speed, motor temperature, battery level, solar panel power, and weather conditions. The data is crucial for their battery management strategy, which determines how fast and how far they can drive without depleting their energy source. The team also needs to visualize the data in an easy-to-understand way, to make informed decisions during the race and improve their performance.

Solution

The team uses Marple, a data analysis platform for engineering teams, to store, process, and display their solar car data. Marple allows them to connect to their self-written monitoring program, which collects data from the car's sensors and sends it to the cloud. Marple then transforms the data into interactive charts and dashboards, which the team can access from any device. Marple also enables the team to explore the data with SQL queries, filters, and calculations, to gain deeper insights and optimize their strategy.

Benefits of using Marple

By using Marple, the team can:

• Track the performance and health of their solar car in real-time, and identify any issues or anomalies that may affect their race.
• Compare the data from different race days, loops, and segments, and see how their car reacts to different environments and situations.
• Optimize their battery management strategy, by balancing the energy input from the solar panel and the energy output to the motor, and finding the optimal speed and distance for each race day.
• Enhance their user experience, by having a user-friendly and customizable interface to visualize and analyze their data.
• Save time and resources, by having a scalable and reliable data analysis platform that handles the data processing and storage for them.

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