Saturday, March 31, 2012

Mini Sumo Bot Board Has Arrived!

I ordered the board on 3/18 and it arrived in the mail today (3/31), 13 days later.  That's pretty impressive lead times by BatchPCB!

Front and Back Side of Sumo Bot PCB
For the longest time, I have been wanting to do a time lapse video of me doing something... anything.... Finally, this time I remembered and set up my free app on my iPhone to capture it (app is Time-Lapse by TippTech LLC).  Check this out.


I still have a bit of soldering and testing to do before I am done, but, when I hooked up my PICkit2, the PIC16F877A was recognized!

During my testing as I solder things on, I realize my status LED is not actually connected to a pin on the microcontroller...... ERRRRR.
AND
I also noticed that there was two unconnected traces in the board layout.  If you look closely at the PCB image on my last post, the bottom center area shows two traces (thin yellow lines)... which are telling me to connect them both ground.  Unfortunately, my ground plane has been cut up into different pieces due to various traces, it disconnected itself (yes, I am blaming it on Eagle)..

Both of the above errors can be easily (but reluctantly) corrected by adding additional wire.  I plan on making V2 eventually anyway.

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