Design Considerations
| Unit | Cost | Fab Board | Can Controller | Can Library | SPI, I2C, UART etc |
| ATMega328 | $5 | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| AT90CAN | $8 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ATSAM3X | $12 | Yes | Yes | Kinda | Yes |
| Arduino Uno | $30 | No | No | No | Yes |
| Arduino Due | $50 | No | Yes | Kinda | Yes |
The AT90CAN was the first option considered. The team had previous experience with Atmel AVR microcontrollers and the AT90CAN had a built in CAN transceiver. The microcontroller was proposed for use in a design review and after a brief discussion it was determined that a better microcontroller could be found. After a bit of further research the ATSAM3X was decided upon due to it being a 32-Bit Arm core running at 84 MHz versus the 8-bit AT90CAN running at 16 MHz. The more powerful ATSAM3X will miss less CAN messages than the AT90CAN and the only tradeoff is a few dollars and a little bit more design work.
A printed circuit board(PCB) will be created for the ATSAM3X with all the necessary components. This includes a voltage regulator, bypass caps as well as terminals to connect to the Viking Motorsports electric car CAN bus.
| Unit | Cost | Size | Color | Visibility | Software |
| Earth LCD | $219 | 3.5” | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| New Haven | $60 | 4.9” | No | Yes | No |
| Sun LCD | ??? | 3.5” | Yes | Yes | No |
| 4D Systems | $109 | 3.5” | Yes | No | Yes |
The 4D Systems 3.5” screen has been chosen to be the display of the digital dash. This choice is primarily driven by cost, size and 4D Systems providing an IDE to create a simple GUI
| Unit | Cost | Max Transfer Rate | Multiple CAN Networks |
| AMIS-42700 | $6 | 1 Mbit/Sec | Yes (2) |
| MCP-2551 | $1.50 | 1 Mbit/Sec | No |
The GUI must be kept simple. The driver will only briefly be able to glance at the digital dash so it must be colorful and simple.
