AAA Sumo Build Pics

Strip back the insulation on lengths of 22 GAUGE wire. We are using telephone wire.

There are about 4 wraps of wire around each end. The wraps do not have to be very tight.

We are looking to connect the battery cells in series so the voltage adds up. The long wire twists connect
power and ground. The twist on the right in the top picture is meant for power.
The single twists on the top corners end in a long pigtail. It is better to leave the twists too long rather
than too short. The ends can be cut down later.

The other three twists are pairs of twists which will make series connections for the cells.
On the base, two switches get mounted. These switches, in this orientation, up is on.

The switch on the left is meant to control the power to the servo motors.

The switch on the right is for power for the whole robot.

The switches need to be oriented so that they are off in the down position.
The sides of the pin for the battery tray may need to be cut back a little to leave enough clearance for
the wires and switches.
The yellow component is a resettable fuse. If too much current is drawn from the batteries, it will break
the circuit until the fault has been removed, then reconnect. The wire twist and pin are bent to fit nicely
in place.

Pre-tin the wires and pin.

If the wire gets too hot, it will melt the plastic it is wrapped around. Try not to apply heat much longer
than a quick count of three

Place the fuse in place and remelt the solder make sure that the solder melts well, and stays in place
until the solder cools. If the solder is grey and cracked, it should be fixed.

The battery connector needs to be twisted to a length of red wire

Pre-tin the wires

Usually when the solder is chased up the wire into the insulation, the insulation melts back a bit.

Cut the extra wire off to make sure too much wire is not exposed.

Pre-tin the top pin of the switch. Reflow and add the wire pair.
Cut and strip the stranded wire to fit across to the other switch.

Solder the stranded wire to the other switch.

When modifying the servos, we noticed that not all of the metal gear servos have all metal gears. With
some styles, there is a pin to remove. I used a Dremel to modify this one.

The potentiometer needs to be separated from the output gear. Find the correct pitch of Phillips
screwdriver. The medium, blue seems to work.
Bend the servo towards the circuit board. Cut the side of the servo body away to give access to the
potentiometer after everything is reassembled.

The servo potentiometers can be tuned to get the motor to stop when the servos are sent to the 90
degrees stop position.
Cut off the end of the servo connector. Strip back the wires and lay out the power and ground wires.
Leave a soft loop then cut strip and twist the red or orange servo power wires.

Pre-tin and trim the power wires.

Pre-tin the top pin on the switch. Reflow and solder the power wire pair onto the switch.
Lay out the negative servo wires in a loose loop, cut and strip. Twist the negative servo wires to the
negative battery wire.

Pre-tin and trim.

Slide a piece of heat shrink over the black bundle.

Pre-tin the negative wire twist. Reflow solder and connect.

Slide the tubing over the connection. Use heat to shrink the tubing.

It may be difficult to line up the screws but fitting the servo on the inside will narrow the footprint of the
robot. This is not very necessary, I tried it on my example.
I added a wire manager around the power wires so the battery wire flexed less.

On the signal wires, I added old jumper cuttoffs so the wires would fit securely and nicely into the
Arduino.
The type of Arduino will determine where the power connector will go.

Add fresh solder to the terminals. The pin is positive and the barrel is negative. There is a polarity
protection diode after the barrel jack.

In the future, I am planning to commit smaller, lower-priced Arduino boards onto the robots.

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