Printed Circuit Boards

Monday, Feb. 29th, 2016

I had lots of work today so it was hard to work on the robot.  I did, however, start to design a circuit board for the head unit to connect all these sensor outputs to in order to interface with the Arduino board and also the original connectors on the sensors.

Here is what I have so far:



The large connector at the top is the 25 pin male connector for the header that has the LED's and the keypad wiring in it.  The J2 and J3 are to get the keypad wires to the Arduino.  J4 is a header to connect the LED's to the Arduino and J5 and J6 are for the Light Detector and the Motion Detector.

I will have a few more connections on this board before I can make it.  The Sonar that was originally in the Hero robot is a Polaroid 6500 series model that is not made anymore and to use it for long range I need an interface board and a few IC's.  I will have to work that circuit out from the original one and see what I can come up with.

Also, I want to add a sound sensor and a newer sonar sensor into the robot without compromising the original looks too much so I will add the connections for those to this board.  I ordered a sound sensor and I have in my parts box a few SR04 ultrasonic sensors that I can work with for the lower part of the robot to have some sensors for not bumping into anything lower than the head.
I might actually go with a few of those ultrasonic sensors so that I have a 'surround' method of detecting which objects are closest or furthest from the robot for the purposes of navigation.

I have also seen temperature and humidity sensors and a new kind of passive infrared sensor that I will also most likely mount on the robot.

That will take up most of the sensors, and then I will move on to the arms...which should prove quite challenging, since the original Hero Jr. robot did not have any arms and the one for the Hero One robot was not very articulate.  My idea is to have arms with an elbow and a wrist joint and small grippers on the end.  But more on that later.

That is all for tonight...there will be more when I receive a few parts in the mail.