Wiring
If you're not careful, wiring up a lego robot can quickly turn into a rat's nest of cables leading to and from places, completely untraceable. While designing the robot, we tried to keep this in mind, keeping wires neat, short, organized and out of the way.
Happyboard Location
Placing the happyboard was a bit of a puzzle. We needed to be able to still reach the board to turn it on/off, press stop/go buttons and use the USB connection for programming. However, we also wanted the board to be centrally located and protected so that other robots would not have the opportunity to accidentally pull out a wire. We ended up placing the happyboard near the back of the robot, leaving small windows in the robot frame so that the USB, frob knob and power switch were still accessible.
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Motors and Servos
Motors and servos were mounted first in strong lego housings, and then reinforced with generous amounts of foam tape. The wires for each were carefully measured to be just long enough to make the connection with a bit of slack in order to keep the wires from tangling with each other. We also had a standard for wiring motors (which side was power/ground) which would allow us to easily swap in a replacement motor if needed.
Gyro
The gyro was used for calculating turns, as well as giving the PID loop error feedback while we were driving straight. We mounted the gyro far away from the happyboard to reduce error.