So first at all, what is RoboCup Junior?

RoboCup Junior is project-oriented educational robotics competition for students up through age 19, with a focus on providing a hands-on, scaffolded environment where learners can grow by expanding their knowledge of sparking their curiosity about and increasing their comfort with technology. We have three challenges: Soccer, Rescue, OnStage each emphasizing cooperative problem-solving; each designed to reach creative young minds with a range of interests, and skills.

https://youtu.be/StxlsmgpdQE

Soccer?

Yes, in RoboCup Junior we have category where where over 1000 teams with more that 4000 students all around world build autonomous robots that play soccer against each other using special ball that emits IR light. Something like this:

https://youtu.be/a6U4tpuQP6s

With custom build robots that look something like this:

https://youtu.be/fuTrGaSgjog

Cool so where can I get this ball to start?

And there is a problem that we are trying to solve with this project. Current manufacturer of IR balls did stopped making them and they are proprietary design with current cost of those ball over 150$ what is for students unacceptable. So we created our own design that is open-sourced with cost of 20$ that can be bought assembled or DIY at home.

How can JLCPCB help?

As RoboCup is organized with unpaid volunteers all cost of developing this ball was paid from our own pockets what we managed to do for testing design but we now need to make 1000 balls to get it out to the teams for as minimal cost of possible. And because we want to make them as cheap as possible we would like to ask JLCPCB to help us with this by sponsoring cost of PCBs and Components if possible. And because JLCPCB has best prices/quality ratio of flexPCBs on a market we decided to use them as manufacture for our flexPCBs.

1 x FlexPCB from JLCPCB

16 x 2*5mm magnets with force 650g

20g of transparent orange PCTG

Glue for magnets, we recommend UHU max Repair or UHU plus endfest 300

And components for PCBs

18350 LI-Iion with capacity 1100-1200mAh (can be found in your local vape shop)

Arduino Nano for flashing fimmware to ATtiny

First you need to 3d print outer sheels from transparent orange PCTG or PC filament. In case you cant find PCTG or PC you can also use transparent PETG but expect less mechanical durability and little less intense emited IR light.

Put little bit of glue on botom of each hole and then but magnets in in the way that both parts will be attracted to each other. Also you can put little bit of glue on a top and scrape it to make protective layer of glue on a top.

First solder ATtiny and using this tutorial upload fimware https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL9vK_xMt4E

Then solder all other components, we recomend using hot-air for LEDs but it can be done using standar soldering iron as well.

Now put everything together and make sure to double the polarity of the battery when putting it in. Use a mobile phone camera to check if every LED lights up and now you can start to make your robot for the next RoboCup Junior Soccer.