Raspberry power supply board, ToF sensors management board, and x-bee remote control board (Made by a French robotics club)

First, we want to thank our partner JLCPCB (jlcpcb.com/RAT) for offering the PCBs. This was a great help to us!

WHO ARE WE?

We are a French robotics club called ARFIT. Our goal is to take part in the French robotics cup each year. This year, our main project is to improve our ranking. So, for succeeding in this project, we must upgrade our robots and develop new ones. The pictures below show the competition and our robots:

In this competition, two student teams will compete. Their fully autonomous robots will have 100 seconds to earn as many points as possible. To earn points, robots must do some actions. During the 2021 edition, for instance, the robots had to move and sort green and red cups. This year, we improve our robots by making some new PCBs. Those PCBs have been manufactured by JLC PCB. Thanks to their great quality PCB and fast delivery, we were able to get to the end of our project. This article describes our PCBs, so that you will be able to reproduce them for your project. For more information on the competition please refer to: https://www.coupederobotique.fr/

OUR 2022 PROJECT

This year we focused on three new PCBs. We call them the "3 ToF" board, "Raspberry pi power supply" board, and "PS2 controller with Xbee" board (ToF = Time of Flight sensors).

• The "3 ToF" board will allow us to plug 3 ToF sensors on a PCB. This board will be placed in one of our robots. With this PCB, we will have a more reliable and smaller electronic board compared to our homemade board made with a hole plate board and wires. Our new 3 ToF board will be connected to the motherboard of the robot. Those sensors will be used to detect obstacles around the robots.
• Thanks to the "Raspberry pi power supply" board, our raspberries pi will be supplied more easily and safely than before with a battery. This PCB will be plugged onto the raspberry pi. Then this Raspberry pi can be embedded on a robot.
• The "PS2 controller with Xbee" board will allow us to control robots wirelessly and with a controller. Currently, we have only one homemade board (with an Arduino UNO+a shield). During the competition, robots are autonomous but during the test, we can move them with a controller.

GENERAL COMMENTS

We have used KiCad v5 for designing the PCBs. First, we have made the schematics. Then we have placed the components and have traced the routes. Finally, we have created the Gerber files which can be sent to JLC PCB to manufacture the PCBs. You can find a lot of online tutorials to guide you through this process.

Once you have all the Gerber files you can go on JLC PCB Website (https://jlcpcb.com/) and upload your files. Their intuitive and efficient interface will help you to upload your files. When your files are correctly uploaded, you can click on the “order” button and select your delivery options. And... It’s done. You will receive your PCB in a few days.

Then we bought all the required components on RS components, mouser, Pololu, Ali express... Once the parts were received, we just soldered the components in place using an iron solder and some classical tin. Again, you can find many tutorials online about how to do perfect solders.

3 ToF BOARD

One of our robots in development is an holonomic robot. This kind of robot can move in any direction without rotating. For detecting obstacles, our robots use Time Of Flight (ToF) sensors. On this robot, we have placed twelve of them (three on each side). These sensors must be connected to a specific hub board and then connected to the motherboard of the robot. The three sensors of one side must be connected to the hub through an HE10-10 connector already soldered on this specific hub board.

So, the easiest way that we thought was to have a PCB that have four connectors. We call this PCB: “3 ToF PCB”. Three of those connectors are used for plugging three ToF sensors. One of them (at the center) is plugged...