Follow these instructions to assemble the Mirobot control board.

Unwrapping

When you unwrap the package you should see a pink bag with the components in it, a white PCB and the black battery box.

Take these out and put the rest of the package to one side for now.

To assemble the PCB you will need:

  • A soldering iron
  • Solder (60/40 tin/lead solder is the easiest to use. Lead free is harder)

It is highly recommended to watch this soldering tutorial before starting if you're not used to soldering. Soldering isn't too difficult, but it's worth taking the time to make sure it's done well so it is more likely to work first time.

The parts

Here are all of the parts that are in the pink bag. At the bottom of the picture are the parts for assembling the chassis so put these back in the bag for now.

Step one

Solder the WiFi socket in place.

Step two

Solder both of the chip sockets in to place. Take care to put the notch in the smaller one in line with the outline on the PCB. The larger one should have the notch on the top otherwise you won't be able to solder a later step.

Step three

Solder the stepper sockets in place. You need to make sure that the side with two notches in it is at the edge of the board - check the photo. They should clip satisfyingly into place.

Step four

Solder the three servo connector pins. This should be inserted with the small end of the pins going through the PCB from the top down.

Step five

Solder in the power switch.

Step six (optional)

Solder in the expansion pins. If you're not planning on using any expansion kits you don't need to do this, though it won't harm to put them in anyway and it's good practice soldering!

Step seven

It's time to attach the battery holder. First, peel off the cover over the sticky pad on the battery holder. Then push the pins on the holder through the PCB from behind like in this picture. Once you've pushed it on so it sticks then you should carefuly solder it making sure you don't melt the Arduino socket.

Step eight

Now we need to solder the pins on to the Arduino board we are using. The best way of doing this is to push both rows of pins into the Arduino socket as shown in this photo.

You can then put the Arduino onto these pins and solder them in. Doing it this way makes sure they are well aligned and will fit in and out nice and easily. The pins are quite small but take your time and it shouldn't be too tricky.

Step nine (optional)

If you think you might want to reprogram the Arduino at some point in the future, you can solder on the programming pins as shown in the photo. You don't need these on in order to use Mirobot though.

Next steps

First, inspect your soldering. There should be no messy bits of solder bridging from the pins to other parts of the PCB. If there are, use the soldering iron to remove them. Then: