ZSZaid Saifan
Résumé

Projects / Golf Cart Power & Throttle

Western Engineering AutoPilot · Oct 2025 – present

Autonomous Golf Cart: Power Distribution & Throttle Control

A student team is turning a full-scale golf cart into an autonomous vehicle. I work on throttle and motor control, and co-designed the board that carries motor current and hands out clean logic rails.

My roleThrottle & motor control; power distribution board co-design
  • Altium Designer
  • PWM
  • ESC
  • IPC-2221
  • 24 V LiFePO₄
Fig. 03D render of the WEAP golf cart PDB in Altium: battery input, two fused branches, the 24 → 12 V buck connector, bulk capacitor C1 and the Pololu motor-driver output.

ContextThe brief

Everything downstream of the cart's 24 V traction pack, the motor drive, a single-board computer, four microcontrollers and their sensors, was being wired point to point. On a vehicle that drives itself, loose high-current wiring is a safety problem first.

The fix was one board that carries motor-level current and supplies clean rails to the compute stack.

My subsystemThrottle control

  • Programmed a microcontroller to generate PWM throttle commands for a high-current ESC, automating acceleration on the full-scale cart.
  • Wired, bench-tested and debugged the system for repeatable speed regulation before it went on the vehicle.

Three tiersPower architecture

  • The 24 V rail runs straight to the motor driver through its own fuse and bulk capacitance, keeping the highest-current path short.
  • A 24 → 12 V buck feeds everything that is not the drive motor.
  • A 12 → 5 V stage supplies a Raspberry Pi 5 and four ESP32 controllers.
  • Voltage, current and thermal margin were checked on every rail, not just the input.
24 V LiFePO₄100 Ah packF1 · 20 Amotor fuseMotor driverbulk caps at inputBrushed DCtraction motorF2 · 5 Alogic fuseBuck24 → 12 VBuck12 → 5 VPi 5 +4× ESP3215–20 A continuous · 2 oz Cu · IPC-2221logic tier
DiagramPower tree. The motor branch stays short and is fused separately from the stepped-down logic tier.

SchematicOn the board

  • Battery Connect brings the 24 V pack onto the board through a screw-terminal block.
  • Fuse 1 protects the branch that feeds the 24 → 12 V buck converter for the logic tier.
  • Fuse 2 protects the motor branch, which passes a 1000 µF bulk capacitor (C1) before the Pololu motor driver output.
  • All grounds return on one shared net, and every connector uses the same screw-terminal footprint, so the harness is simple to service.

Copper sizingCarrying the current

  • Trace widths calculated to IPC-2221 for a 15–20 A continuous target.
  • 2 oz copper on both layers, with polygon pours instead of discrete traces.
  • Via stitching so both pours share the load and spread the heat.

Heat dissipation was a placement constraint from the first layout pass.

SafetyProtection

A 5 A fuse on the logic branch and a 20 A fuse on the motor branch, coordinated with the driver's current limit so the fuse acts last. Bulk capacitance holds the motor rail up through current steps, and anti-spark connectors protect the contacts when the 100 Ah pack is connected. The board shipped with a full BOM and wiring documentation for design review.

ValidationResults

15–20 Acontinuous current target
3power tiers: 24 V, 12 V, 5 V
2 ozcopper on both layers

Next step: current sensing on each branch, reported back to the compute stack, so the vehicle can see its own power draw.

FiguresBoard and schematic

Select any figure to open it full size.

Fig. 13D render: wide copper traces with via stitching between the fuses, buck connector, C1 and the Pololu output. Silkscreen credits Zaid & Abdelrahman.
Fig. 2Schematic: battery input split into two fused branches, one to the 24 → 12 V buck converter and one through C1 to the Pololu motor driver.

05Contact

Let's build something.

I'm looking for 12–16 month co-op and internship terms starting May 2027 in power and electrical design, controls, robotics, embedded systems or hardware test.

Email me LinkedIn