1/18/2026 2 PM - chose the motor and battery

I needed to choose an efficient motor/battery combination in order to make the car move at a decent speed with a decent runtime, but also be as cost-efficient as possible. I decided to go with a battery that I already had to simplify things, which is a 2S LiPo with 1800mAh. Luckily, I have most of the parts for this build, such as all of the raspberry pis needed, servos, and cameras.

1/18/2026 9 PM - Created initial schematic

I decided which motor driver I was going to use, and designed how the battery would be able to give power to both the raspberry pi pico and the motors. In order to achieve this, I will use a BEC, which turns the 7.4 volts into 5 volts, which can power the raspberry pi pico. Because I do not have that much experience with PCB design, and it is not my main focus for this project, I am aiming to make the PCB as simple as possible, and using boards such as the pi pico and motor driver board rather than the bare integrated circuits like the RP2040.

1/19/2026 - Finished the motors, battery, and RPI pico schematic

I finished wiring the motors and their driver to the appropriate pins on the raspberry pi pico. Because I chose motors with built-in rotary encoders, the wiring was a bit trickier, but it will be worth it because rotary encoders can help give necessary data for the car. As I previously said, I am not exactly and expert in electronics, so I had to do a bit of research on how to wire and power these rotary encoders, and which pins they would use on the raspberry pi pico.

1/22/2026 4:33 PM - Finished the schematic

I completed the schematic by adding pins for 4 sensors that could be connected to an I2C bus. I researched how it would be possible to implement such a design, and then added one to my schematic that can allow for a maximum of 4 sensors to be connected. This implements the XSHUT pin, which is available on many different I2C sensors. The sensors that I am planning to use are ToF (Time-of-Flight) sensors, which measure distance, and maybe an IMU (inertial measurement unit) These sensors will be able to provide valuable data that can allow the car to orient its position and detect walls.

1/22/2026 4:49 PM - Routed the PCB

After finishing the schematic, I started routingthe PCB. This is the most complex PCB I have attempted yet, but I think it came out pretty good. I tried to fit it in as small of a package as possible so that It would not take up too much space or weight in the car.

1/24/2026 - Researched and changed robot sensors

Due to Blueprint's extension, I now have time to improve this project and put in more effort. Because of that, I thought it would be a good idea to make my own simple LIDAR type of sensor that would simply consist of a servo rotating a ToF sensor. I could buy a premade lidar, but that would be expensive and overkill. I researched this idea and determined what components would be necessary and how it could be implemented. A camera may still be implemented just for the purpose of data collection.