Electronics: Soldering RoboBrrd's Brain!

Coolios RoboBrrd: "YIPEE! Time to solder your RoboBrrd's BRAIN! It's one of the more important steps for it to conquer the wooooooorld! Bahahaha"

Intro

In the following steps we will be soldering the connections together that make the electronics of RoboBrrd work! It will require some patience, but you can do it!

In order to assemble all of the electronics, you will need some solder, soldering iron, and some wire. Having extra tools like pliers, wire cutters, third hand, are also useful.

Learn Soldering

If you do not know how to solder yet, be sure to check out the Soldering is Easy! comic book.

Once you know how to solder, it's important to know that for this board (and any board for that matter), if you have any cold solder joints or solder bridges (two pads connected to each other when they shouldn't be), it can lead to weird glitches and malfunctions. So always double and triple check your soldering before going on to the next step ^_^

All Components

Here are all of the components that you should have in your anti-static bag.

If there is a component missing from your bag, feel free to contact us and we can try to help you.

Bill of Materials

Quantity	Item	Place
1	Arduino Pro Mini	On RoboBrrd Brain APMB board
1	RoboBrrd APMB PCB	This is the core of the brain
1	Quick! Resistors! PCB	The RGB LEDs plug into it -- then goes to RoboBrrd APMB
1	Quick! Voltage Divider! PCB	The photocells plug into it -- then goes to RoboBrrd APMB
2	RGB Piranha LEDs	Plugs into Quick! Resistors!
2	Photocells	Plugs into Quick! Voltage Divider!
2	1k Ohm 1/4 Watt Resistors	Pull down resistors for Quick! Voltage Divider!
4	68 Ohm 1/4 Watt Resistors	Green & Blue LEDs for Quick! Resistors!
2	150 Ohm 1/4 Watt Resistors	Red LEDs for Quick! Resistors!
3	3-Male Headers	Servo headers on RoboBrrd APMB
2	4-Female Headers	LED and LDR1 headers on RoboBrrd APMB
2	12-Male Headers	Arduino Pro Mini
2	12-Female Headers	Arduino Pro Mini headers on RoboBrrd APMB
1	2-Male Header	Vcc->Vin header on RoboBrrd APMB
1	Shorting Block	On the Vcc->Vin header (on RoboBrrd APMB)
1	6-Male 90 degree Header	FTDI header on Arduino Pro Mini

Quick! Resistors!

This breakout board is used to simplify all of the resistor connections needed for the RGB LEDs. Resistors are needed to limit the current to the LEDs so they won’t burn out.

Step 1

Gather your RGB piranha LEDs, and solder wires to the leads (if this has not been done already). The length of the wire should be ~6cm.

Make sure to solder the wires in the same order on each LED. There is an angled edge on one of the corners of the LED to help match up the sides.

Looking from above, this is what colour each of the corners of the LED corresponds to.

Solder the first LED to the connection pads as seen in the above photo. The wires are in this order: blue - red - Gnd - green.

Solder the second LED wires next to the first ones.

Step 2

Determine the values for your resistors.

The wires that connect to the red colour on the LED need 150 ohms.

The wires that connect to the green and blue colours on the LEDs need 68 ohms.

Solder the resistors into their appropriate places for the colours, similar to as seen in the photo.