PANDACORN BOT

Hey Everyone how you doin!

So recently I made this MICRO FIGHTER BOT which was a small Bluetooth-controlled robot that moves really fast.

PANDACORN BOT is a variant of MICRO FIGHTER BOT which has few tweaks like increase length & Height, and a PANDA-UNICORN Hybrid PCB in front which kinda looks like this robot face.

It works exactly the same but the only difference is PCB added at the front part, Pandacorn PCB is another project of mine that I made a few weeks ago.

It's basically a PCB Badge that has LEDs in the Horn Part, LEDs are controlled by a mosfet and this mosfet is controlled by an onboard Attiny13A. In this version, I removed everything from the PCB badge except for the LEDs and Mosfet and use D9 Pin of Arduino Nano to drive the LEDs with a Fade Sketch added into the main code.

In this Instructables, I'm gonna show you guys how I prepared this setup in few easy steps! Let's get started

These are the stuff needed for this BOT Project

3D Printed parts-

• Base x 1
• Motor Mount x 4
• Front Shield x 1
• Long Pillars x 2
• Long Pillar with pandacorn support x1
• Front and rear rail x2

Components for BOT Base-

• L293D Motor Driver IC
• Arduino NANO
• Custom PCB (which was provided by PCBWAY)
• Micro Gear DC Motor
• Female Header Pins
• DC Barrel Jack
• AMS1117
• 4.7uf Cap 1206 Package
• 22uf Cap 1206 Package
• SMD LED 0603 Package
• 1K Resistance 0603 Package
• HC01 Module (SMD Version, not the HC05 module which is for breadboard)
• Battery JST Connector

Components for PANDACORN-

• Custom PCB (which was also provided by PCBWAY)
• LEDs 0603 Blue
• A03400 Mosfet
• 10K Ohms Resistors

So the goal here was to combine two of my recent project to make a new project that is this "PANDACORN BOT" it works the same as before iteration but the only difference is the increase in height&length in the body and the addition of PANDACORN PCB in the front part.

PANDACORN PCB looks like the face of this bot hence the name PANDACORN BOT.
Before actually physically connecting them, I have to redesign a few of its parts.

One of them was the mounting pillar, this mounting pillar part is a cylindrical pillar that connects Main PCB with the Base.

On the front mounting pillar, I added two circles holding pillars that basically hold the pandacorn in its place as pandacorn has two huge holes on it which are like his ears but anyways, I used these holes to fix it on the pillar.
At last, I added two attachments on the front side and backside which I named RIB.

The idea here is to increase the length of this bot to increase its center of gravity.

Oh also, LEDs on PANDACORN PCB Badge are soldered inverted, this is because I have left an opening in the top silkscreen of the PCB, by soldering LEDs in an inverted position, their glowing parts face towards the PCB and we could see their glow through the front side. this is a neat trick which I have adapted from a similar PCB Badge I saw on tindie.

following are the files that you need to print.

• Base2 x 1pc
• Front Pillar x 1pc
• Motor mount x 4pc
• Pillar x 2pc
• RIB x2pc

I printed these with PLA at 20% infill.

The whole idea behind making this Micro Robot was to make multiple of these bots and make them fight.

Small Robots each equipped with shields and other kinds of weaponry to attack the opponent microbot. For a detailed version of this Micro Fighter Bot, you can check out its Instructables page but let me explain the working of this robot in simple words.

https://www.instructables.com/Micro-Fighter-BOT-Wi...

This Micro BOT is made out of two key things-

• the first is the PCB
• the second is the 3D Printed Base

PCB and 3D Printed Base are held together with 3 Pillars, kinda like in a sandwich configuration. The battery is placed between them and on the bottom side, there are 4 Micro Gear Motors and wheels.

The PCB consists of an Arduino Nano connected with the L293D Motor driver IC in its proper configuration, HC01 is also connected with the Arduino Nano.

I've used a 12V 2.6A Battery in this setup, It's not recommended to add 12V directly with Arduino's VIN port so I added AMS1117 to step down this 12V into 3.3V for Arduino and HC01 to run without any issue.

The lower Base consists of 4 motor mounting brackets 3 pillars and a Base that holds the whole setup. all parts are 3D Printed and available for printing, I've attached this project's fusion360 file so you guys can modify it or something.

PANDACORN or Kawaii PANDACORN is a PCB Badge that looks like a panda and unicorn hybrid.

It's an Attiny13A Powered PCB badge that drives 6 Blue LEDs with help of a simple Mosfet as switch setup.

I've designed this badge in such a way that the LEDs on the bottom side will be visible from the TOP side, Not LEDs exactly but their glow is visible through PCB as I've left an opening in the TOP solder mask area and soldered the LEDs inverted, so they would shine right through the fr4 board.

Check out the whole post from here- https://www.instructables.com/Kawaii-PANDACORN/

Let me explain the whole built process and assembly of this badge including working in few words to keep things short here as this is just an accessory for the robot.

This badge is basically an Attiny13 controlling a mosfet as a switch setup, mosfet is driving LEDs. Working on this badge is simple but the complex part of this project was to design the weird-shaped PCB, the good thing was I found an image online of PANDACORN so I just added that onto my PCB design and make the whole PCB around it.

I assembled it with solder paste dispensing process and then flash the attiny13A with the main sketch using an Arduino as ISP Programmer setup and the badge was completed.

But in this project, I removed almost everything and just kept the LEDs (I didn't use 6 LEDs, just used 5) along with the mosfet and two resistors.

I added wires to VCC GND and Gate of mosfet so I could power this setup with the Arduino Nano present on the MicroBot Board.

To Combine Both of the setups, I first added the PANDACORN PCB with the MicroBot Main Board.

Wiring

• VCC of LEDs to 5V from AMS1117
• GND to GND
• Gate of Mosfet to D9

We first solder the wires from PANDACORN to the mainboard to connect them together with the above wiring configuration.

After adding wires, we have to add more wires for each motor.

later we can solder them to the motors when the base is assembled properly.

After Wiring PCBs together, I prepared the base of this project.

I added the long pillars first with 2.2mm screws and then added an additional part that I made which was RIB on both sides to increase the length of the robot to counter the center of gravity effect.

Basically, this helps a lot in improving the stability of the robot as The lower your center of gravity, the easier it is to keep your balance but in my case, I increased the height of the bot which means this becomes more unstable. To counter this, I added the RIB to both sides which lower the center of gravity.

After setting up the 3D Printed Base, I added the MicroBot PCB on Topside with the same 2.2mm screws and the pandacorn PCB in front (there are two mounting pillars that hold the Pandacorn PCB in its place)

At last, I added wires to the motor and plug the battery on the mainboard.

Next, we flash it with the main sketch that has been altered.

(i added a fading sequence to the sketch for pandacorn's horn)

The Code of this Bot is pretty simple as I have only added few lines for fading an LED that is connected with Pin D9.

• For Programming, we first remove the jumper from TX and RX which place between HC01 and Arduino Nano.
• Then we plug the USB cable and upload the sketch to the bot like usual.

I'm using this Bluetooth controller app that you can download from the google play store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....

Open this above app and pair your HC01 with it, after that open its controller mode and assign the Buttons their value which is in our case these.

• TL for Turn Left
• TR for Turn right
• F for Forward
• R for Reverse
• S for Stop

As you can see, our robot is working! and it's pretty fast which was my goal, to make it as fast and sturdy as possible.

Now, this setup works like a development platform, a micro fighter platform. the idea here is to make multiple of these Panda lookalike robots and let them do fighting and stuff.

(same premise as Micro Fighter Bot)

This version is definitely not the final iteration as I still have to improve a lot of things in this bot.

• first would be the overall stability and alignment of motors, as you could see in the attached gifs, this robot is unable to take a straight path, this is because of misalignment of motor position.
• The solution here is to remake the base of this project with a better motor mounting solution.
• PCB needed a few changes which include adding pandacorn face directly on PCB with some kind of solder joint. I did a similar trick in one of my old projects, I added glasses frame and glasses side temple together by soldering Pads together. (both of them were made by FR4 Board)
• Weapons, this setup requires weapons! that I will definitely add in the next version.

Well, these were few points that I will be improving in the next version of this BOT project.

If Project was fun then do hit that like button!

Thanks, PCBWAY for providing PCBs for this project, Check out PCBWay for getting great PCB service for less price. PEACE OUT!