Assembly guide to the Ryanteck RTK 003 budget robot kit

Today arrived the long awaited £30 budget robot kit, the only thing needed that wasn't in the box was a pi and some batteries and a battery pack for the pi which would raise the price to a total of £60 but expecting you would already have a pi, batteries lying around and a USB power bank of some kind the project seems an excellent price.

The project comes in a nice size box with everything neatly inside.

First thing was to sort everything out.

The pack comes with two battery holders, you only need one, that being the open version as it has screw holes inside.

Firstly I screwed on the castor wheel you will see like a square at one end that this will fit in,ensure you screw it the way the picture shows or the screws will interfere with the castor.

Next was to add the motors to the frame, these require the long bolts to go through the two holes in the motor and the little metal bracket again follow the picture example so the screws don't interfere with the wheels then screw to the frame as per picture.

Push the wheels and if you want can add the distance measurement wheel to each motor which is now the inner section of the board but opposite side to the wheel.

Next was to screw the pi to the chassis using the hexagonal bolts.  Using the two  pi mounting points screw the two bolts into it till it's tight, don't worry if there is a gap as long as it holds the pi as per picture below.

With the other two hexagonal bolts attach to the frame and screw them into each other like this.

Next is the battery pack as per photo.

Next stage is a bit of soldering, with the guide I have written here: http://smstextblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/how-to-put-rtk-000-001-motor-control.html

Once built plug it on top of the pi attaching the positive and negative to the single blue block as per bottom right of above picture, red in left and black in right.  Here I found a jewellers screwdriver just right for the job.

Underneath it was time for some soldering, due to the way the motors sit the positive will be close to the board one side but furthest away on the other. This is so the wheels are not driving against each other later on. If this happens don't worry, we can just swap the wires around on the m1 or m2 block to counter it.

Screw them into the board m1 being left motor m2 being right.

Now you should have something looking like this

Next up to add a small power bank 2600-3000 mah should be fine you can put on more but you will need to think about weight issues.

This particular one in using is neat, an 18650 3000mah battery inside, thin and the lead that comes with it fits the pi and when needs charging can use the other way round and plug the lead into a USB charger and can charge it too.

As you see the standard USB is for powering the pi whilst the mini USB socket is for charging the power bank so at least you will always have the correct lead handy.

Using a cable tie I have tied it to the frame, you could use electrical tape or gaffa tape to do the same.  

There all done, don't forget to plug the wifi dongle into the pi, download the software and you're ready to go.

For adding software please take a look at this post:  http://smstextblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-ryanteck-budget-robot-adding.html

If you haven't bought one yet you can order via the tindie site the linky is https://www.tindie.com/products/Ryanteck/ryanteck-budget-robotics-kit-for-raspberry-pi/

Go and enjoy.