I liken the Robotic Arm to a very faithful dog, when it's behaving itself (and not twitching like it's stuck in an electric fence), it will follow your every command. With the robotic arm at school we (me and the technician) were trying to turn off the power switch, effectively getting the robot to shut itself down. It obeys your every command, even if that means it's virtual demise.
Anyway, down to the Knitty Gritty of the matter. What is there to update on.....?
Programming and Control:
There are a multitude of options for control, in my last post about the arm I touched on Logicator control of Robotic Arms, but over the past few weeks experiences and research have led me to encounter much better ways of doing it. Programming Languages such as "Visual Basic" and "Python" allow graphical windows to be created on the monitor of your PC. These windows are much like any other program such as word, except that they can have buttons and sliders on them that when pressed or moved send movement commands to the robotic arm. With knowledge of how to program for servo control in one of these languages you can access a multitude of possibilities, such as recorded positioning and much more accurate control. It's amazing how far learning another language takes you, regardless of whether it be computing or MFL (Modern Foreign Languages).
Construction:
This is the area of the Robot Arm where ground has really been made, the base is complete and ready to accept the circuit board. The top panel is cleverly screwed down to the bottom box so that the user can easily access the circuit board inside, as well as completely take off the main mechanism of the robot arm, leaving a box with just the circuitry in. This is done by gluing pillars into two of the corners of the box, after a few calculations and sketching on the top panel you can line up the lid with the pillars so that when you drill a pilot hole through you go through the lid and into the pillar. You then drill a clearance hole through the lid and countersink it so that the screw heads are flush with the lid surface. Thus creating a smooth surface that no one can hurt themselves on, that can also be removed.
I have glued together the central section of the arm and have attached the lower shoulder section to it's corresponding servo. I was talking about precision earlier, and the central section is probably the best example of this in the whole project. The center of the servo horn has to be perfectly lined up with the hole for the pivot point on the other side. These two halves have to be glued together, meaning that I spent a painstaking hour lining up the central section and then G Clamping it into place so it could dry without slipping out of alignment. Happily I can report that it all perfectly lines up, so I was successful there!
That about finishes up for this post but I have an announcement to make before I leave you to the rest of your day. I am making a time lapse of the whole Robotic Arm build process, something that I have as of yet not really seen done before. I will be uploading this too YouTube when it is complete (I still have to finish the arm after all), it's going to be roughly 15 - 20 minutes long so don't watch all of it, skip along if you just want to see a brief overview.
Here's a little taster to get you in the mood!
P.S I would like to say thank you Diane Nicholls for the tweet, it really is appreciated!