Designing a redundant CAN-to-LTE telemetry system for an electric race car
By Purav Datta. Published .
The goal
Our Formula Electric team wanted live visibility into the car during test sessions: vehicle state, battery conditions, electrical performance, and drivetrain behavior. With that information at trackside, engineers can analyze performance and adjust the vehicle’s configuration during the session itself.
Why two links
The system uses both WLAN and LTE. Redundancy means live telemetry does not depend on a single wireless path, which matters when the data is being used to make decisions during a test.
The signal path
Signals start on the vehicle’s CAN bus. STM32-based embedded interfaces handle the connection to the wireless side, and a Rust-based bridge called RoadLink carries the telemetry onward using MQTT-style messaging. The data lands in InfluxDB, a time-series database, and Grafana turns it into live dashboards.
Using the data
Telemetry also connects to the rest of the team’s engineering work. Recorded data supports analysis after a session, and lap simulation can be compared against what the car actually did on track. The platform is still being developed, so this article will grow as the system does.