Noot / Erwt Notes

Note #8 Friday 30 September 2011

I finished up my first attempt at the layout:

It was a surprisingly close fit. I’m not used to the annoying through-hole parts that occupy space on both sides of the board. I think I’m going to have to rework it though, as this layout has everything except the line reflectance sensors on the top PCB. This makes step-by-step assembly and testing (for the kit) annoying because the battery holders block soldering most of the components. I can probably move everything except the batteries, beeper, LEDs and pushbutton to the bottom PCB.

Bumper

I’ve also been playing around with ideas for the bump sensors. I’m considering making a bumper skirt mounted on the two front bolts with something squishy (washers maybe?). The bumper would have a wire to ground and two through-hole plated holes that fitted around (but not touching) two header pins on the left and right. Pushing against the bumper would, in theory, touch the pin to the plating, closing the circuit. Have to see if that’ll actually work.

Repository

I’ve committed the current schematic and layout, as well as the blender file, to my Bitbucket repository.