During my Internship at Tesla Motors, I developed a machine that could test the cooling performance of prototype battery packs for Model S, Model Y, and Model 3 in an automated way.

The machine could push coolant through the the battery pack and measure temperature at multiple locations within the battery pack as well as the pressure in the cooling pipes. The flow rate of the coolant could be adjusted through software by controlling a valve.

I designed and debugged the circuit board of the machine using Altium Designer. Next I programmed the Teensy Microcontroller. It controlled the components such as the pump and the valve, it read information from multiple sensors regarding pressure and temperature information, and it received input through the user interface which was a system of switches, dials, potentiometers, and an LCD screen.

Lastly, I developed a graphical UI that runs on a standard laptop and be connected to the Microcontroller through a serial connection. The GUI allowed not only for direct control of the machine, but also for scheduling of testing cycles as well as plotting and saving of recorded data. This way the testing engineer did not have to monitor the machine during testing cycles. For the GUI, I used Python, PyQT, and QT5.