I am thinking of building a Master/Slave system using the AL5D arm, and I need to know the best way to go about doing this.
I already have a working AL5D that I control using the ssc-32 and the free sequencing software. I know that I should purchase a BotBoarduino, but other than that I’m not really sure where to start. I realize that purchasing another AL5D and modifying the servos would be the best route, but I was hoping for a cheaper option. Would it be feasible to buy the AL5D Hardware-Only and install potentiometers? I’m hesitant to do this because the original arm uses the servos as joints, and using potentiometers instead might change the geometry of the slave arm. Alternatively, would it be worth my time purchasing the individual parts for the slave arm? Would this be cheaper? Is there anything else I might need? How do I implement the code given on other threads? Is there any specific type of potentiometer I need? If I use servos, does the slave are have to have the same type of servos as the master arm?
I’m relatively new to robotics, so any help and tips are appreciated.
Hi. I do have some experience with this and so I can only tell you what I have learned and/or know…
First off, you may want to purchase the arm hardware and some cheap servos to modify to get a fool proof telemetry system, where you know there wouldn’t be any dramatic changes or differences.
Or you may choose to just buy some pots and attach them to a home made master 'built using the same dimensions as the slave arm.
The pots in most servos are 5k. And are very easy to get hold of.
You don’t need to use the exact same servos for the master as you have in the slave.
My slave has hs645servos and the master has hs311hb servos. These can be brought very cheap. I got min e from eBay for about £5 each.
Here is my project as an example of how I did mine… viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7517&p=74136#p74136
I hope this helps.
Just to clarify… the master will be the one you will need to build… and the Arm you have already will be called slave.
Thank you very much for your reply. So the “master” is the arm that controls the “slave”, correct? I may have mixed that up in my first post.
Just to clarify, you would recommend purchasing the hardware and cheap servos because this is easier and guaranteed to be the right dimensions?
I still think it would be a good idea to start experimenting with $3 worth of regular pots before distroying $50-60 worth of servos. One will probably need to use analog/position mapping in the control code weather servo pots or regular pots are used.
Yeah, I’m probably just gonna use pots and build a master arm out of wood and aluminum.
So now that I understand the hardware part, what about software?
How do I get the information from the master arm to the slave arm?
My partner for this project has some experience with C#, robot C, etc, but I have only minimal experience with BASIC and html… So how do I implement the arduino board? What language do I use?
How do I wire the entire system?
Would it be possible to use my laptop instead of the arduino board?
//Servo myservo; // create servo object to control a servo
int potpin = 0; // analog pin used to connect the potentiometer
int val1; // variable to read the value from the analog pin
int oldval1;
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600); //myservo.attach(9); // attaches the servo on pin 9 to the servo object
}
void loop()
{
val1 = analogRead(potpin); // reads the value of the potentiometer (value between 0 and 1023)
val1 = map(val1, 0, 1023, 500, 2500); // scale it to use it with the servo (value between 0 and 180)
if (val1 != oldval1){ //myservo.write(val1);
Serial.print("#1P");
Serial.println(val1);
oldval1=val1;
}
// sets the servo position according to the scaled value
delay(150); // waits for the servo to get there
}
[/code]
Correction there…
The slave arm is the one that replicates the master.
Therefore the slave arm is the complete kit arm, and the master is the modified control.
