The great [Doctor Iguana] has been working on a pair of robots which interact with each other utilizing mRF24J40MA wireless transceivers. This provides a difficulty in debugging, as he truly didn’t have an simple method of tracking those communications. His option was to develop his own base station which lets him utilize a computer to screen what each robot is saying.

He spun his own board for the project. USB connectivity is supplied by an FTDI chip, the FT232RL. This converts the USB communications in to serial for the dsPIC33 microcontroller. The FTDI chip includes a relatively fine-pitch, however the footprint can still be fabricated utilizing toner transfer if you’re relatively familiar with the process. [Dr. Iguana] took some close-up pictures of the unpopulated board which may make you a bit anxious with the soldering iron. The other end of the board holds the exact same Microchip wireless module as he utilized in his robots.

After a bit of rework (noted on the picture labels) he got this up as well as running. now he can catch all of the wireless communications as well as see if issues are because of the sender or the receiver.