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Low Cost Robot Arm

github.com

101–110 of 258 posts

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#101

The geek in me is drooling, but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project

Drinks mixer! Line up the booze bottles and other stuff. No need for brute strength. Tolerances of one or two millimeters are mostly fine.

This actually sounds to me as bit complicated. As you need to adjust angle for each pour from a bottle. And then there might be different viscosities involved with some bottles...

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#102

Anyone who finds this interesting might also like this one, it‘s not DIY – comes fully assembled: https://www.waveshare.com/roarm-m2-s.htm I have one and the build quality is really impressive for the price point.

This is one of those things I have NO NEED FOR but I definitely would want one on my desk.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#103

I'm surprised (or perhaps very unaware) that there doesn't seem to exist a company yet that mass produces cheap, high quality, reasonably standardized robot arms. So many things like 3D printers or CNC machines have entered the consumer/amateur level price realm, but this seems to be something still largely unexplored. Seems to have Arduino/Raspberry Pi scale potential, but I haven't heard of a name/ecosystem that po…

There is a reason there is no standard hobbyist-grade robotic arm.

People think they can build their own robotic arms for leas than a "real" robotic arm costs, but the do not account for wobble or repeatability.

With all due respect to the person who posted a design for a robotic arm made with RC servos on HN, I would like measurements of the repeatability. Have it draw the same pattern on a piece of paper every day for a week. Show me how closely the 7 lines overlap. I doubt that it can draw such a thing; it will tear the paper or get jammed without the strength to tear the paper.

Source: I've been building hobbyist robots since the 1980's, researched robots in the 1990's including a masters thesis, and teaching robotics for most of the last decade.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#104

The geek in me is drooling, but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project

> but are there any practical home uses others have found for robotic arms? Hacking is always more fun with a good project.

A reader of this thread that had a temporary disability posted some ideas about practical uses:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39903953

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#105
post #98

Why not start with something less ambitious, like low cost robot platform able to follow people and carry stuff around and avoid obstacles. No arms, I am okay using mine to put stuff on and off it. When I had leg injury and used crutches, carrying stuff around suddenly became a problem. There are many people with impaired movement. And even without that, I often misplace things and it could help there. There are plen…

i was going to ask if turtlebot was too small for you, but thought i should check the price first so uh, yeah, i'm guessing you're thinking the 250 price point instead of the turtlebot's 1000+

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#106

I'm surprised (or perhaps very unaware) that there doesn't seem to exist a company yet that mass produces cheap, high quality, reasonably standardized robot arms. So many things like 3D printers or CNC machines have entered the consumer/amateur level price realm, but this seems to be something still largely unexplored. Seems to have Arduino/Raspberry Pi scale potential, but I haven't heard of a name/ecosystem that po…

There is a reason there is no standard hobbyist-grade robotic arm. People think they can build their own robotic arms for leas than a "real" robotic arm costs, but the do not account for wobble or repeatability. With all due respect to the person who posted a design for a robotic arm made with RC servos on HN, I would like measurements of the repeatability. Have it draw the same pattern on a piece of paper every day…

Why are you so negative towards this? It's just an Open source project... who cares how good it is. It's a great way to learn, and play, and experiment.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#108
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason there is no standard hobbyist-grade robotic arm. People think they can build their own robotic arms for leas than a "real" robotic arm costs, but the do not account for wobble or repeatability. With all due respect to the person who posted a design for a robotic arm made with RC servos on HN, I would like measurements of the repeatability. Have it draw the same pattern on a piece of paper every day…

Why are you so negative towards this? It's just an Open source project... who cares how good it is. It's a great way to learn, and play, and experiment.

That post is in the category „all knew it was impsossible until some stupid with no idea made it“

That somebody was 4 decades failing, does not mean that at some point it won‘t be possible. In the last 4 decades the prices have lowered and the quality is much better in the RC world, if you know where to buy.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#109
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lack of applications hasn't prevented the sale of a large number of Arduinos lol

Arduinos are for prototyping, which makes the application fairly massive. The company I work for used them to develop one of our machines before we moved to a custom board. So, I'd say they are pretty useful.

Come on! They are for tinkerers!!! Same as such a robot.

Re: Low Cost Robot Arm

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holding a water pistol to shoot at foxes in my garden might be useful. They other humane deterrents (ultrasonics etc) don't work.

You don't really need a robot arm for this though... Also on my list of projects for cats :)

Future proofing for when they evolve into flying foxes! You'll need the extra degrees of freedom
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