It has been a few weeks since I last did any work on my TinyMoBot.
TinyMoBot #6 : The Transparent Version
The battery pack I was using was a 4xAA pack and was much too large to fit inside the glass cover being used. So I decided to purchase a battery booster to take a 3.7V LiPo battery I had to the 5V needed by the rest of the system. As I was ordering this component I decided to get a smaller Arduino as well and settled on the Beetle which is small but does seem rather expensive for what you get. Still, there didn't seem to be many existing alternatives. Unfortunately my first attempt to purchase these items was unsuccessful with them both being lost somewhere in the delivery process. After waiting an extended period in the hope that they would be found and delivered I cancelled them and reordered. Fortunately this second time they both came within a few days so now I am able to move forward with TinyMoBot.
The first thing I decided to do was to use the Power Boost 500 to increase the voltage from the LiPo battery from 3.7 to 5.0V. It all seemed straight forward enough as all that was necessary was to plug the battery into the connector on the PCB. Unfortunately the battery connector is wired with the opposite polarity to the socket on the PCB. When I eventually noticed this (I know, I know - I should have checked first) I then had to solder some wires on to make the connections. After which everything then worked correctly, see shown below in the video.
The problem now is that as the battery (and on/off mechanism) would be inside the glass cover, I do not have any method of controlling it. My next step will be to work out some method of controlling the power on and off and possibly communicating with the TinyMoBot. I might then replace the Arduino Nano with the Beetle at some point. The drawback of the Beetle is that connections to the Tx and Rx have to be made to small pads on the PCB rather than pins, so some careful soldering would be required (not my best skill!).
Dubbie
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