the quest for robots

I did not have much free time to work on this over the last couple of months, but every once in a while when I did remember (hard not to, I keep the robot hand right in front of the computer), I tried to do something, mostly in the hardware procurement side of things. some of the things I ended up acquiring: - Raspberry Pi Zero (also the Raspberry Pi Zero W, which has wifi+bluetooth internally, but I just received it today thanks to Mr. Arjun Rao ), for more versatile control (also to make possible to connect to the Leap Motion) - AA battery power holders, to use AA batteries to power the servos - A PCA9685 chip, for multiple servo control - various electronic circuitry (probably won't be necessary for this project anymore) in addition, I was made aware of a nice project called Cylon.js  and its sister project Gobot , which allows users to program microcontrollers using JavaScript and Golang, respectively. I really wanted to try Gobot and take a dive into

some servos that I had ordered were delivered. the instructions suggested another brand/model of servos, but these were a much more economical (cheap).  I tried adding them to the hand: I'll have to print the "pulley" pieces that will be attached to the servos. meanwhile, I did somewhat (hackily) got the wrist to work, for now: you keep hearing the "usb plugged out" sound in the background, and that's because the servo was being powered by the arduino. the servo's power draw appears to be causing a shutdown of the device. will need a better power source for the servos. it feels like these pieces that are supposed to be plugged into the servo will have size issues. 

currently: stuff that happened are: wired the fingers added screws to necessary assemblies witnessed first failed print during this: servos haven't come yet, but once they do, we can start installing them into the hand/forearm. as always, credit to the Inmoov project.  

I guess pictures are worth a thousand words for this. I am looking at this page in the Inmoov website to download and assemble the parts. initial printing of parts: shown above are some of the forearm parts and some palm parts. the rest of the palm with some of the fingers, along with the forearm part glued together. thankfully, these parts are designed to be printed in smaller parts and put together, which makes it possible to this to be printed with a small 3D printer like mine, which only allows for only 12cm x 12cm x 12cm (~5 inch x 5 inch x 5 inch) in print size. some parts had to be realigned in the model-slicing software in order to have it fit in the print boundary. all the printing done so far. you can see the inside of the forearm now has a servo bed, with more things needed to be printed and attached to the inside. I will need to get screws to attach them. currently, the only big part missing the the last wrist part, which I am considering printing wit

the fingers are moved using wires and tension. each finger is looped through with a wire/string/line in a top-bottom fashion. when the top wire is loosened/bottom wire is tightened, the finger curls in its joints, resulting in a "bent finger".  you don't have precise control of each joint movement, but it is simple enough to be controlled by a single actuator (in this case a servo).  here is me just using my own hands as an actuator: here it is hooked up to as servo and controlled by a potentiometer: the movement is not smooth because 1) it's controlled by a potentiometer that I am controlling, as seen in the background, and I was unable to move it all the way with one smooth finer motion. 2) the tension in the line was not entirely tight. I need to learn how to tie these well. now I have a get a bunch of servos.  much credit and thanks to Inmoov once again.

well, I'm back. "back with a 3d printer" kind of back. took a week off earlier this month for a stay-cation, and during this time of peace, I decided it was the right time to get my hands on one. behold, the Monoprice Select Mini . thoughts so far: - very inexpensive for today's standards (got it for $200) - produces great prints - very non-proprietary this review convinced me in the end that this printer is the one. by the way, the above picture shows the 3d printer with the "sample filament," which I soon realized was way, way too little to do anything. I honestly didn't know what I should do with it at first, trying to find 3D models to print in the internet, until I stumbled into this . an open-source, 3D-printable robot. it's always been a dream of sorts for me to build a controllable hand. it was my intention to build something like that during one of my college projects , but it ended up being something else (software)