After a crazy term taking 5 classes, and very little time to actually think about the robot we are going to build for the next month we finally start actually building it.

I did not know what to expect, how things are going to roll out. It was all very new to me. And maybe the reality did not hit me until the end of the first week; things will soon get very hard and time will become a constrain. Getting in we were still confused as to how to proceed but we knew that we wanted to get the circuits done first as they were going to be constants throughout the project. I personally took on the task to build the h-bridge circuits.

This was my first job soldering components to a PCB and it turned out to be much harder then I expected. I was told to first put all the components of the circuit on the PCB, test it, and when all goes as expected solder it. This was not a good idea as the components had long legs that would shorts, and bad connections would make it hard to get a good test of it. Worst of all was the difficulty it brought with when actually soldering the components onto the PCB; there was just too many wires and confusion quickly became a factor. I built 2 h-bridge PCBs with full confidence on it's structure but they both failed. It seemed that the soldering contacts were not perfect. I practiced and got Quinn to help me solder the other circuits which eventually worked with the same layout. During this week my soldering knowledge really grew and I realised the importance of good practice in order to achieve reliable circuits for the robot. We ended up building two h-bridges.

Another interesting point during this process was thinking about how we are going to have I/O work to the circuit; we did not want to make it overly complex because in the long-run it would make our life hell. We also wanted the wires to lead in and out of the circuit in a sensible and clean manner. We ended up finding a great way around this.

We tested the circuit and got it to work. This is great since we have as a goal to build the mobility of the robot first. During this the rest of my team mates were working on building the mechanical side of the Geronimo. They focused on the chassis and drive system which is going great.

Mohamed-Ali Hached