My son has selected a “Robot Arm” as his first high school Science Fair Project.
I feel like he would need something more then a $50 OWI arm, to achieve a decent grade and some respect from the teachers for his efforts
I have been researching various arms and it seem like the Lynmotion AL5D is the easies to build, and has the most versatility, for a high school project.
For this first project I feel like he could build the arm, learn the components, and create a simple program to do some type of sorting and storage project.
Next year we could move onto more complex programing, and inputs and logic.
What items would we need to accomplish the project goals I have defined. And is there a more cost effective approach. Most of what I’m seeing is in the $350 range.
Thanks for any advise you can provide.
I have found a lot of great content on your website.
Based on what you are describing, the AL5D or AL5A arms with FlowBotics Studio might be the best.
The assembly of the arms gives a good introduction to mechanical / electrical systems, and FlowBotics Studio includes a project for making movement sequences that can be pretty elaborate. The SSC-32 board that’s included in the arm also has four inputs, so switches and analog sensors can be added to make more advanced projects.
Hope this helps and let us know how the project goes!
I ended up buying the AL5A and the Flowbotics software.
Everything has been going well, except that I am getting some inconsistent results. For example, my son is using the software to build a wooden (jenga) type tower. Two blocks on each level, 3 levels high. Once the tower is built we are reversing the patterns, and taking the tower down. This is requiring some variances in the flow of the patters, but fundementally it’s working well.
HOWEVER, I am finding that for some reason the blocks are not being placed in the “exact” same spot on each execution of the pattern. Sometime it’s fine, other times the location seemd to be off by a few degrees, mostly on the base servo is where I see the problem. I still have a few weeks to get this fixed before the Science Fair, but I need some help. If the blocks do not consistently go in the exact same spot, then the reverse doesn’t work so good.
Is it possible that this is a firmware vs. Software version issue, or something I need to do to the base servo, or some other suggestions. Or is it buggy software?
Hi Mike, would you be able to take a video and share it with us so we can see exactly what you mean? It can be pretty hard to troubleshoot a problem like that without seeing…
A suggestion: when the arm base is rotating, is it rotating quickly? Sometimes when movement sequences in the program are short, the arm might not have enough time to finish its movement before doing the next action.
You can try slowing your sequence down by changing the Playback Speed to see if that helps:
