Build Guide

Getting Started

Before you start building the UKMARSBOT you will need to get yourself organised! You have obviously found the UKMARSBOT build guide, so mark that page as a favourite in your browser as you will be referencing it quite a lot. Below is a checklist of things to do:

  1. Spend some time looking at all the Building Guide Pages so you have a good idea of what will be involved, so that you can be confident that you will be able to do everything needed.
  2. Have a look at the Tools and Materials page and make a list of the tools and parts that you need to get.
  3. Where you have options, such as for motors, encoders and batteries, read the Choosing Motors, Choosing Batteries and Fitting Encoders pages to help you decide what specific items you want
  4. Identify suppliers and part numbers for the parts that you will order. Group them by supplier and get as many as you can from a few suppliers as this will reduce your postage costs. Don’t forget that you will only be able to get the main PCB and sensor PCBs from UKMARS unless you want to get these PCBs produced yourself. Remember that parts bought on EBay that are coming from abroad may take some weeks or longer to be delivered.
  5. You don’t have to get everything at once. It all depends where you want to start. With just an Arduino Nano and mini USB cable you can download the free Arduino IDE and start learning to program in Sketch. When you are ready to start to write your programs, read all of the Developer Notes pages to help you, especially the Arduino and Pin Assignments pages.
  6. If you want to code in Python instead of Sketch you can use the Cytron Maker Nano RP2040 board instead of the Arduino Nano and download free development tools from thonny.org
  7. When you are ready, assemble the main board then fit the motors and the battery as per the build instruction pages. You will now have a robot that you can program and make move.
  8. Once you can control your robot, build one or more of the sensor boards and fit them.
  9. Make a small test line following or wall following board to test your robot on and get it working
  10. Work out how to control your robot better and improve your programs until you are happy with them.