I stayed up late to start the RetroChallenge right at midnight. I have been itching to put that robot chassis together! It assembled pretty well, but I have to admit it was a bit daunting to get it together and realize that there are no more instructions from here on.
After the chassis was assembled, I test fitted the proto PCBs that I intend to use. I hope to fit everything on three modular boards: 1) the MC14500b system; 2) medium power switching outputs; 3) sound and lights.
Unfortunately, I see that I am going to have some issues with this setup. There are a lot of mounting holes on the chassis for common 7x5cm (or 7x7cm, or 3x7cm ) PCBs, but they dont align quite right (I assume it is probably my PCBs at fault). Since most of the hardware I have (besides the robot chassis) is not metric I had to open up the holes in each of the proto PCBs a little bit to fit my standoffs. That helped the alignment with the holes in the chassis, however the holes I need to mount PCBs are directly over and blocked by the motors. My screws simply won't fit there. I will probably have to counter-sink the chassis to accept some flat-head screws in the future. Those standard "Radio Shaek 2" 5x7cm power bus proto PCBs need to be rotated 90 degrees and only fit on 2 of the chassis holes, but I don't think I will be using those.
Next I test fitted the light sensor for the line follower. I looked into the data sheet a bit more and I think I am not going to be able to use this "digital" sensor. I will post details to come once I have some time to figure this thing out.
That's it for now, maybe I will make some progress tonight.
Current Part List:
- FEETECH Mini Round Robot Chassis Kit - 2WD with DC Motors
- SparkFun Line Sensor Breakout - QRE1113 (Digital) < May not work...
- 5x7cm Universal Breadboard Bakelite Test Prototype Boards for Electronics Experiments
- Misc. screws and nylon risers from my favorite store, Murphy's Surplus.
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