Not Riding Your Bike in the Rain, Build the Escape Robot from a Kit

It is January. Stop watching bad movies on cable. Build a robot from a kit. This is the first of several robot-building experiences for 2008.

The Escape Robot from Jameco costs $19.95, and you just spent that on two chai tea lattes and a couple of pumpkin bars. So, no excuses. You don't have to be an electrical engineer. The directions come in the kit. And it gives you a chance to practice your soldering skills. It has a infrared sensing system. So, it will move in different directions based on what it perceives. It is not at the same level of the Mars Rover, in terms of intelligence, but it is still cool to block its progress and watch it turn to avoid something in its path.

You are not riding your bicycle during the late, dark, rainy night hours. And your non-soldering friends can go wild and unleash their creative forces by building a maze that the robot can negotiate. Building one robot is the first step of creating a Robot Circus.

So, here is how it works:

1. Read the instructions included in the box before you do anything else.



2. Make sure you have fresh batteries in the house. If not, go get some now. Otherwise, it is a total drag when the robot is ready to roll, and you have no way to power it and play with it. (Try to use rechargeable batteries if you can. Since you will probably play with this toy until the batteries are dead.)



3. Organize the pieces in the kit and make sure that they are all there. (I use old egg cartons to separate the pieces.)



4. Follow the instructions and solder it together.



5. Take it to a maze made by your friends and see if the Escape Robot has what it takes to get a job offer from the Robot Circus Director.

More information and photos after the jump.

 

Photos taken by Wheelgirl

Here are a couple of suggestions based on my experience if you are building this kit. If you have your own suggestions that you think might help people, post a helpful comment. Again, I am a beginner. So, my comments are going to relate to my limited experience.

• Invest in the best soldering iron you can afford. Good ones have a knob that allows you to adjust the temperature. It is like having a good toaster if you love to eat toast, there are lots of setting in between warmed over and burnt. However, you can start out with an inexpensive soldering iron. Don't let the equipment get in the way of the discovery.


• Make this kit before you make any other beginner kit: Minty Boost at ladyada.net. Why? Because the project is useful (a portable USB battery pack in an Altoids gum tin to power your iPod). The instructions are clear and complete with really great close-up photos of every soldering and testing step, and Ladyada does the best job of making sure that if you follow the directions, beginners will end up with a successful project. She doesn't assume you know anything. And this is a very good thing for beginning electronic hobbyists. It is a great feeling to make something that works. Also, you will learn things like certain types of resistors and capacitors don't have to be soldered in a certain direction, but electrolytic capacitors, LEDs, and diodes usually do or they won't work. The Escape Robot directions give you clear illustrations, but the directions are all illustrations. There is not a ton of text to read for information. So, you might overlook little clues about component orientation if you don't have a clue as to what certain components require.


• Add some tweezers, scotch tape, and a magnifying glass to your required tool list. (If you get a third hand tool, many times it comes with a magnifying glass.) The tweezers are helpful for holding small things like nuts in place, and a strip of lightly affixed cellophane tape holds components with multiple pins in place, like the chip holder, when you turn over the PCB (printed circuit board) and solder.


• Here are some things I noticed while building the Escape Robot (after I had built the Minty Boost from a kit):
  • Leave the chip on the pink antistatic foam until right before putting the battery holder in place. You can wreck a chip with static electricity.
  
  
  • Take your time. Pay attention to stripes and + and - orientations of leads. Read things twice. If you rush and do something wrong, it may not work. And that will be a drag.
  
  
  • Keep solder on the copper paths on the PCB. Like with sewing or welding, try to make the "unseen" part of your work reflect an attention to detail and a clean, even method of attachment.
  
  
  • Align the components that need to be aligned:
    • The striped resistors in the kit don't have particular alignments (the ones shaped like little rounded hourglasses.)
    
    
    • The Zener diode does have a required alignment. The dark stripe matches up with the wavy line on the PCB drawing.
    
    
    • The brown disc-shaped ceramic capacitors in the kit don't have a particular direction.
    
    
    • The cylindrical electrolytic capacitors do have a particular direction. They need to have their - stripes aligned with the - hole on the PCB drawing.
    
    
    • The transistors have a direction. The flat part lines up with the flat part on the PCB drawing.
    
    
    • The socket that holds the chip has a notch. The notch has to line up with the PCB drawing.
    
    
    • The buzzer has an orientation. The + leg of the buzzer matches the PCB drawing.
    
    
    • The LEDs have an orientation. One leg is shorter than the other. Make sure to match up the proper leg with the PCB drawing.
  
  
  • Use cellophane tape if you are having trouble soldering in components:
    • The M1 and M2 pins to which the battery cables connect are easier to solder if you first place a piece of thin cellophane tape over the holes on the non-soldered black side of the PCB, and then poke the pins through the tape into the holes. The little bit of tape holds the pins, so you can flip over the board and solder the pins (on the green side of the PCB).
    
    
    • The chip socket is easier to solder if you affix it on the black side of the PCB with a piece of scotch tape, and then flip the PCB over and solder it (on the green side of the PCB).
    
    
    • The infrared diodes and holders are easier to solder if you use a little scotch tape to affix them in their holders to the black side of the PCB, and then flip the PCB to solder them in place on the green side of the PCB
  
  
  • Attach the nuts to the screws in the gearbox assembly by holding the nut in place with a pair of tweezers and screwing the bolt into the nut. This worked better for me than trying to thread the teeny nut with my breakfast sausage fingers onto an existing screw.
  
  
  • Make sure that the infrared diodes (the three clear LEDs on the front part of the robot) are facing straight ahead. If they get bent upwards, the infrared receiving module that is affixed to the "tower," can't communicate with them. (One of my clear infrared LEDs got bent during transit to the bike shop, and the robot kept beeping and acting like something was in its way, when the way was actually clear. If this happens, gently bend it back into place.
  
  
  • Have fun with it, and if you are an electrically gifted engineer who can make these robots from kits with one hand tied behind your back, mod this kit and post your mod.

 

Photos taken by Wheelgirl