Hello,
I’m interested in building a “robot” to be able to learn the basics and would like your suggestions.
I would like to use an arm/grabber as the robot. Some of the things I’d like to use (to be able to get familiar with) which I think is included in the kit is a software to control it, motor, microcontroller, and a sensor (something that can “see”). Not sure how I combine the arm with the seeing sensor, however I will need to learn how both work eventually, so if you have any advice for how I can implement it, I would appreciate it.
In addition, I do not know how to code at all (but can learn) so something fairly easy to start with for that part.
Is there anything that I should make sure my robot includes? Which items do you recommend?
Thank you.
If you’re looking for a robot arm with software, motor control, microcontroller and sensor, you might consider one of the AL% series arms from Lynxmotion (RobotShop owns Lynxmotion):
lynxmotion.com/c-27-robotic-arms.aspx
Easy software would be something like the FlowBotics software, included with some of the kits:
Ex: lynxmotion.com/p-1038-lynxmo … c-32u.aspx
If you want to program the arm (i.e. lines of code) you’ll need an arm which uses the BotBoarduino (Arduino-based) microcontroller:
Ex: lynxmotion.com/p-868-al5d-ro … duino.aspx
Note that this is harder to start with, but we have sample code if you want to control it via PS2 remote.
To include a sensor, you might consider a simple distance sensor:
lynxmotion.com/p-260-sharp-1 … ensor.aspx
Mounting: lynxmotion.com/p-397-multi-p … using.aspx
Cables: lynxmotion.com/p-83-servo-ex … le-12.aspx
All of these products are also available on RobotShop.com. You can see other robot arms here:
robotshop.com/en/robotic-arms.html
How much programming experience do you have?
Do you have experience working with micro-controllers?
What is your budget?
I do not have programming nor micro-controller experience. I am beginning a project which requires knowledge of all of these things which go under “robot-building” and understanding of how it works in order to manage any of it. So to begin somewhere and learn the basics I decided to build a fairly simple robot. I will be eventually learning all of the required things in more depth, assuming all goes well, but want to start off trying it out before deeply investing myself. My budget just for this mini project is probably $400 max. Suggestions?
At $400,
I would suggest
-
A Lego EV3 Mindstorms Kit. With this kit you will learn C programming, working with sensors, Mechanical assembly is done with lego, lots of documentation / projects. The only con about this is it has a potential to look less impressive
-
Activity Bot. I hate recommending these Parallax kits because they are overpriced for what they are but hey, you will learn Arduino ©, micro-controllers, bread boarding, and some sensors.
-
DFRobot Rover. This one you will learn everything mentioned in the activity bot and more. This one will be the most challenging but a lot of people have this kit, including myself, I have an older version. We could help you along the way.
Actually I just noticed I listed it in order of easiest to most difficult.
’
At $400, I would stay away from hexapods. Even though these kits may be $200, it saves you money for any expansions you may want to do. A robot arm is not a good first project since controlling a robot arm properly is either done through flowbotics (does most the work for you and doesn’t teach you any extendable programming skills). If you want to code it yourself. This isn’t saying FlowBotics doesn’t have it’s place. I’m just biased against graphical programming languages since what you learn is less applicable to many other platforms.
