First Robot Motherboard

Designing the Motherboard for My First Robot

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14th Ramadan, 1429 AH at Queens, NY.

Today, I completed building the brain of my robot, the MCU board using the ATmega8 AVR microcontroller. This MCU board can be powered by a 6V adapter or five 1.2V NiMH rechargeable batteries. The ATmega8 AVR runs on 5V, which is why I used National Semiconductor’s Low Dropout Voltage Regulator LM2940T.

Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the day and night there are signs for people of reason.

Quran 3:190

Here’s a detailed schematic of the motherboard:

First Robot Motherboard Schematic
Motherboard schematic for my first robot.

For programming the AVR, I use the AVRISP mkII in-system programmer and the AVR Studio development IDE. The MCU board features two I/O ports—8-bit PORTD and 6-bit PORTB—and a 6-channel ADC. The Vcc for the PORTD and PORTB headers can be selected as either 5V or 6V using the two yellow jumpers (marked in red). The board also provides 5V output headers to power external devices.

First Robot Motherboard
Top view of the ATmega8 motherboard.
First Robot-Motherboard Wiring
Bottom view displaying intricate wiring and soldering.

Note that, this motherboard supports various AVR microcontrollers, including the ATmega8, ATmega48, ATmega88, and ATmega168.

Mohammad Islam
Mohammad Islam is an American Muslim, self-taught engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur with a passion for computer software and hardware development, robotics, and IoT. Uncover more of his journey in his bio.