Implementation

In this part on documentation, I will be documenting the implementation of electronics in my project, implementing them on copper stripboards from my paper plans.

Tools used

Before I start, I would like to share/document about the tools used during this process.

  1. Soldering iron
  2. Solder
  3. Tip cleaner
  4. Fume Extractor
  5. Clamp
  6. Electrical Tape
  7. Wire Stripper
  8. Wire cutters/snippers
  9. Digital Multimeter
  10. Hand drill bit

Electronics Implementation

6V battery pack

I had originally planned for my battery pack to be connected to my boards and arduinos separately. However, by plugging it directly into the 'VIN' port on the arduino, I can use the onboard voltage regulators on the Arduino Uno to reduce the 6+ volts from my battery pack to 5V.

So, I would have to cut some male dupont connectors and solder them to the cables of my battery pack.

I first start by cutting a Male to Male dupont connector in half followed by stripping their ends of some housing, giving me 2 male connectors for the battery pack to plug into the 2 female connectors on the Arduino Uno.

Here is my battery pack, as can be seen, there are 2 multicore cables, one black for ground and one red for VCC.

I first started by soldering the another multicore cable extension to the two cables as I didn't want to cut the original cables soldered to the battery pack as redoing the cable could take a long time or even be impossible. By soldering an extension, I can cut down the extension instead of the original cable.

I pre-thinned before cables with solder before applying heat and joining both cables

Certainly not my best soldering job but it does the job.

I think that this is one of the areas where I would prefer a soldering station, by adjusting the tip temperature to a lower temperature where solder can still be melted, less heat can be applied to the cable and in turn the cable housing, which melted slightly due to the excessive heat applied.

I repeated this for the extension as well as the dupont cables, here is the final result:

As can be seen, when the 6V battery pack is plugged into the arduino vin and ground terminals, the arduino switches on, the 6v battery pack acting as an external power supply.

I think that connecting it to the 5V terminals on the arduino was a great idea, when measuring the terminals of the battery pack I got 6.6V which is rather high.

Input Board

For my inputs board, I first started by soldering my header pins, buzzer and push buttons.

Motor Board

For my motor board, I will soldering the components onto this piece of recycled copper stripboard. As can be seen, there have been some resistors soldered to it, I hence used a penknife to apply multiple cuts to break the copper stripboard.

Here is the cut piece of copper stripboard.

I then proceeded to solder my components onto the copper stripboard, here is the final result:

I'm quite happy with its small layout, however I wasn't too happy with the unaligned pin which got loose whilst I was soldering, hence its weird position and angle, instead of being flush perpendicular to the board.