Dashbox

Dashbox — CAN Dashboard Controller PCB

A two-layer dashboard controller board for the USC Formula Electric car. It sits on the vehicle CAN bus, drives the driver-facing dash, and takes its power from the car's 12 V rail.

Front and back copper with silkscreen and board outline, as of the final revision.

Design

The CAN front end carries the parts you would expect on a vehicle bus that runs next to a tractive system: a common-mode choke and a dedicated ESD device ahead of the transceiver, with a ferrite bead on the supply. Connector pinouts are broken out to 4- and 6-pin headers for the dash harness.

Repository contents

hardware/
  dashbox.kicad_sch     schematic
  dashbox.kicad_pcb     board layout
  dashbox.kicad_pro     project file
  schematic.pdf         rendered schematic
media/
  layout.png            both copper layers with silkscreen
  layout-top.png        front copper only

Open hardware/dashbox.kicad_pro in KiCad 9.0 or later.

History

The commit history reconstructs the design's real progression from dated KiCad save snapshots, from the first schematic on 22 September 2025 through the final layout revision on 19 November 2025. Each commit corresponds to an actual working session.

The largest single change was on 22 October, when copper pours went in and routing was completed; the following week consolidated those pours down to a single ground zone and removed redundant parts.

Attribution

The Dashbox was designed by Finn Krieger and Aagam (@aagamjai-jpg) for USC Formula Electric.

The car's full electrical system — including the boards this one talks to on the CAN bus — lives in the team repository at SCFormulaElectric/USC-Electrical-Systems, which is the authoritative source for the vehicle design. This repository is a standalone copy of the Dashbox portion, published for portfolio purposes.

Other boards in the vehicle (relay board, precharge, SDC, VIL, RML) are the work of other team members and are not included here.

License

Released under the MIT License — see LICENSE.