Collaborative Robotics
How to build your own collaboration enabled robot
Cables.
Each of the components of the truck which you have created PCBs for, must also
be connected by a 5 way cable. If you have connected your connectors
consistently, all you need do is build up connectors of the right length and
start connecting.
We also have a power board, which the connectors will need to go in and out of
once. The power board is just a small regulator connected to the smaller
battery (not the main motor battery as that is likely to contaminate your power
supply). I don't have a PCB to show you, as it was so simple we just made it
from veraboard. So get a 5 volt supply from the battery, then connect it to the
4th pin of the 5 pin connectors. 0V to the 5th pin (as described in PCBs -
you've got to be completely consistent so that you can use any cable in any
position).
The next step then depends somewhat on your configuration. We have the motors
board fairly central, ultrasound1 at the front, ultrasound2 at the
back, compass back right and hin232 convertor also fairly central. In
order to keep cable runs as short as possible, we can then build a ring
connecting and going through each of these components - it helps to colour the
connectors so that you know you've been through each board rather than reversed
the direction of the ring at some point, as this can get quite confusing.
It is also helpful to connect the hin232 to the motors as soon as possible, not
only because this is the shortest cable distance, but also in order to ensure
that should one of the sensor components go down, even without the ring
redundancy (not yet in place!) the motors will still be operable, and most
importantly controllable.
Our configuration: power, us1, motors, us2, compass, hin232, power.
The power board should simply connect all lines across the 5 pin connectors, so
data lines will pass directly through.
Very little has been said thus far about the configuration of individual modules
such as the compass, ultrasound and motors. These will be added to this
document later, but can currently be accessed through datasheets.
