Robot Building For Dummies

From Robot Building For Dummies by Roger Arrick, Nancy Stevenson

Building your own robot takes some mechanical skills — you need to be able to wield a drill, pliers, and screwdriver. Youll also need some technical skills, like knowledge of PBasic so that you can program your robot to do cool things. The following info can be good to have on hand as you build and program your robot.

Expansion Connections and Pinouts for Building Robots

If you’re building a robot, you’re making lots of electrical connections, so you’re dealing with lots of pins. The following table shows the signal for expansion connectors and pin numbers. It can help prevent unwanted cross connections.

Expansion Connector	Pin Number	Signal	Expansion Connector	Pin Number	Signal
1,2		Ground	16	P11	Green LED
3,4		+5 volts	17	P12	Jumper J7
5	P0	Left whisker	18	P13	Jumper J6
6	P1	Right whisker	19	P14	Switch 1
7	P2	Rear whisker	20	P15	Switch 2
8	P3	Temp sensor	21		RB7 from coprocessor
9	P4	Light sensor	22		Encoder pulse
10	P5	PIR sensor	23		Servo motor #1
11	P6	RC drive motor input	24		Servo motor #2
12	P7	Speech output	25		Servo motor #3
13	P8	Network to coprocessors	26		Servo motor #4
14	P9	Speaker	27–40	Unused
15	P10	Red LED

Common Screw Drill Sizes Used in Building Robots

The following table shows the tap drill and clearance drill bit sizes to use with various screw sizes that are commonly used in robot building. Keeping this information handy can save you some while you build.

Screw	Tap Drill	Clearance Drill
2-256	.070 (#50)	.089 (#43)
4-40	.089 (#43)	.116 (#32)
6-32	.106 (#36)	.144 (#27)
8-32	.136 (#29)	.170 (#18)
10-32	.159 (#21)	.196 (#9)

PBasic Programming References for Building Robots

If you’re interested in building robots, you’re going to be working with PBasic, the language used to write code for microprocessors. The following lists tell you how to use PBasic to help program various functions: