Open Collections

Porter, Devan; Zheng, Sandra

The intent of designing a fuel efficiency meter was mainly to provide end users with a tool to monitor their instantaneous mileage while driving. This has the capability of allowing users to develop their driving skills to reduce fuel costs and improve the overall sustainability of the environment. A number of other features have been integrated into the instrument as the project progressed, including trip mileage, fuel flow, digital speed, and best efficiency speed. A prototype was built as a team effort between January and March 2011. The design and implementation of the prototype involved integrating a flow sensor with appropriate flow capacity, assembling a suitable user interface, and programming a menu using an Arduino environment to accommodate the different features in an efficient manner. The resulting prototype is comprised of a compact enclosure with three push buttons for “select,” “next,” and “back,” and a fuel flow sensor that can be inserted into the fuel line of most vehicles. The next step in this project would be to assess it for small-scale production and market it over the internet. It is then recommended to look into further testing procedures to have a certain degree of quality assurance before proposing the product to distributors. A number of obstacles and regulations may be involved should the project eventually enter this stage.

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University of British Columbia. APSC 459

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0074464

Science, Faculty of; Physics and Astronomy, Department of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/