Drew and Jacob - Soldering boards

It’s that time of year again… where the sounds of knowledge fill the home labs, garages and basements across the globe. Here in the ArduinoFun lab, we have been busy working on this years project ADM-Robot 1.0 aka Recycle-bot.

I will be posting progress photos and notes as we go along to document the process for our science fair project.

What is ADM 1.0? Basically we built an Arduino, added a Dual Motor Controller to it and a small prototyping area. Hence the name ADM (Arduino Dual Motor).  The board works and is programmed just like a normal Arduino. For the science fair, part of the rules stated we could not use an actual Arduino board, but were able to build or modify our own.

Shawn and Jacob - Drilling component holes

Below is a zip file which contains the files that will allow you to create your own PCB file. According to Drew and Jacob, Recycle bot will be used in school to help drive interest in getting classmates to start recycling. “Having a cool robot moving around the lunch room to collect your recyclables will encourage everyone to participate because it is so cool!”

We will be using a metal trash can that we found at the store that just looks like it was meant to be a robot.

To make a copy of the PCB, you can follow the Instructable that I created that uses a home Inkjet printer. The entire process works really well and the boards have turned out great.

Drew and Jacob - Prototyping ADM 1.0

This zip file contains two PDF files (solder side & component side), for printing your own circuit board.

Once we get a little further along I will start posting some videos, photos and Arduino sketches that we use.

We are also working with GridConnect on a project, and hopefully if all goes well ADM will be enabled with WiFly

Board Photos on My Flickr Page.

Component Side, Solder Side