Skoobot

There was a miss-wiring of the charging led that really bugged me on the last board, and, in this spin, I discovered I forgot to fix it. Arrrrggghhh!

This was kind of bust business wise, but it was good to see people I know. They are a great bunch of guys after all. No takers on Beta kits though.

I was able to test all 5 mainboards, BLE connected and distance sensor working. The distance sensor i2c pullups are 0201's, so whether they reflowed correctly is the iffy part of the design. One weird thing, one mainboard gave a general error when trying to program. I noticed the JTAG was connecting and reading the chip info. I read the chip flash and saw it was all 0xff, like I'd expect. I erased it to see if erase worked, and viola, it now programs. But, what the farts, why did this one board do this and not the others? Why does erasing fix it? Must be a weird flash thing.

I built a 2nd robot and BLE didn't work. I found a bypass cap was crooked and touching the crystal cap. I moved it and viola, BLE started working. Then the left motor wasn't working. After much looking, I saw a header pin had reflowed solder into a via. So the step pulses where going into the config signal. Config was supposed to be constant high for indexer mode on the motor driver IC. I then sucked up the solder with braid, and suddenly the wheel came to life. I then put the shell on, and then the left motor stopped working again. Now it wiggles. This means one of the two coils is not being energized. I am kind of tired of fixing stuff at this point. Plus I need to have fun, but I am having trouble letting go of making this all work, and then taking off and going motorcycling or Karting.

Wednesday I go to the robot club. These are guys that build robots, not buy them.  But I see if there are software only guys who want robots. Then off to Robogames next weekend, for same thing. I will try and build an email list. Makerfaire is okay for selling robots, but it is a month away and net 30 terms, which means I might not get paid for a month for the robots I sell. Man, not optimal at all.

https://makerfaire.com/maker/entry/65381/

2nd order of motors. These are half the cost of the motors I'm using but they are higher current. I will have to try them and see. If they work, I can cut $4 of my COGS.

I am making 20 Skootbots to sell at MakerFaire. This is what $650 of Digikey parts looks like (yeep).