I chose to build a robot arm for my Raspberry Pi project because I was interested in seeing how to control mechanical parts and motors with the Raspberry PI. I researched different robot arms on the internet there were several to choose from. I ultimately decided on a kit from Sun founder because it seemed to have the best features and support. Besides the kit from Sun Founder I also needed to get the Raspberry PI and some 18650 rechargeable batteries. The batteries were a little bit of a challenge to find since they are a bit of an uncommon size. I found some on Amazon and also at Batteries Plus.
The first step was to assemble the parts of the Robot Arm the instructions were not real clear but included images that helped. After I had already assembled the parts I did find a you tube video showing the assembly. In addition to assembling the parts it was also necessary to download and flash Ezblock for Raspberry Pi onto a micro-SD card. I had some difficulty with the download and flash of the program it turns out the etcher program I was using was not the best and I had some issues with card readers. While it did work it kept giving an error that made me think it wasn’t working. It seems like I spent a lot of time messing with that. After that most of the assembly went fairly smooth.
- Sunfounder Pi arm instructions- https://learn.sunfounder.com/category/piarm_kit/
- Balena Etcher- https://www.balena.io/etcher/
- EzBlock Studio- https://ezblock.cc/download/index.html
Once it was all assembled I was able to use Ezblock to program the arm to be controlled by dual joysticks. The joysticks move the arm up, down, left, right and controls the selected attachment on the end of the arm. There are 3 different attachments to choose from for the arm a shovel bucket, a claw and a electromagnet. Below are videos of the shovel bucket attachment and the claw attachment.
I had fun building and programming the arm it was a good learning experience. I was satisfied with the end result and being able to demonstrate the function of the arm. If I were to do it again I would try to find an alternative program to etch the download to the Micro-SD card because of the issues I had. I did find alternatives are out there but did not try any since I was able to make it work in the end. I would like to explore being able to program the arm more with other options EZblock was ok to use but not the most user friendly and took some time to figure out how to use it.
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