Prepartations:

1. Begin with preparing your workspace. It’s best to have a spacious place to assemble your kit, like an empty desk or a large table.

2. Prepare your screwdriver and previously assembled nuts and bolts box. Keep in mind that your kit consists of three types of screws: 12 mm, 20 mm and 70 mm. All the nuts are the same size.

3. Don’t use too much force when breaking off wooden elements from the forms. Be careful not to break the parts. You can also use a small craft knife to cut the joints in the forms, but be extra careful when doing this!

We wish you a ton of fun during the assembly of your LOFI Robot kit 🙂 Enjoy!

Assembly: LOFI Brain

LOFI Brain is an adapter or shield for the Arduino microcontroller, which enhances its functions and makes it easier to connect electronic modules.

Now in a few steps, we will prepare our “brain” for further work. First of all, we need to place wooden shields on top of the Adapter to protect the sockets and enable attaching the boards to our robotic constructions.

1. In your kit, you will find an Arduino UNO compatible microcontroller and our Adapter.

2. Start with splitting the two boards, as shown in the picture below.

3. Put the blue board aside for a moment, we will come back to it later.

Prepare wooden shield parts for our Adapter. You will also need the screws and the screwdriver.

Most of our wooden parts come within forms. You need to break away the parts from the forms, but be careful not to break them.

4. Once you broke away the three elements of our shield, place the two filling elements inside the Adapter, one by one, as shown below.

5. Next place the main shield on top with signs facing up. Use 12 mm screws and bolts to fix the shields to the Adapter. Make sure you’ll tightening all the screws to the same extent to keep the shield straight. If you have problems completing this step, try using 3 20 mm screws and one 12 mm screw (for the hole with INPUT sign on).

6. Lastly, connect the Adapter along with the fixed shield to the blue Arduino board. Make sure all the pins from Adapter fit correctly to the sockets on the Arduino board.

Assembly: the vehicle

Prepare the following parts for the upper part of the rover:

1.

Notice. For more effective and easier assembly we encourage you to try out different ways of placing your construction on the workspace. We know from our experience that sometimes it is easier to screw elements together placing them in various configurations. Sometimes it is better to work out your own way of doing things, that is why we don’t always give ready-made solutions 🙂

2.

Prepare the parts for the sides of the vehicle.

3.

4.

5. Now repeat the two previous steps to assemble the other side of the rover. Notice that this time you need to put the parts together in mirror image.

Notice. After assembling both sides of the rover, place the parts next to each other and check if the motor shanks are in the same axis.

6. Combine the sides with the roof of the rover using 12 mm screws. Don’t tighten the screws to the maximum yet – we need them a little bit loose to fit the bottom part later on. Prepare the following parts for the bottom of the rover:

Prepare the parts for the bottom of the vehicle.

7.

8. Make sure that the small wheel is set closer to the edge of the rover than to the center. It’s important for proper balance of the robot.

9.

Tip. When assembling parts with multiple screws set far aside, it’s best to tighten the screws halfway, until you get all of them in place. Once you do that, you can finish tightening the screws.

10. Prepare the parts for the front facet of the rover and the distance sensor mount.

11.

Notice. The wooden parts are quite tightly fit with the sensor. That is why you need to be careful placing the sensor inside the mount, don’t use too much force or the sensor might break. The sensor can be placed inside the mount only after assembling the mount. Remember that the sensor pins need to face up.

12.

13.

14. Lead out the motor cable through the holes on the roof of the rover. Screw on the front facet to the rest of the rover using 12 mm screws.

15.

16. Prepare the parts for two wheels and assemble them using 12 mm screws. Next put on the rubber orings on the wheels.

17.

Congratulations! Your robot is now ready!

Electronic connections

1. Connect the motors to the M1 and M2 ports of the LOFI Brain controller. Make sure the small metal walls inside the pins of the motor cables are facing the plastic walls of the pins on the controller.

2. Connect the powerbank to the micro USB slot on the Adapter.

3. Connect the distance sensor to the corresponding slot on the Adapter. Make sure you have connected the pins VCC, TRIG, ECHO, and GND as shown in the picture below.

4. If you are using a bluetooth module, connect it to the corresponding slot on the adapter. Make sure you put the module in the right direction, see the picture below.

Programming

In order to steer the Rover, connect LOFI Brain with LOFI Blocks on your computer using the LOFI Robot Extension. Then put together the following script:

If you’re curious why the program looks like that, please see this lesson.