I am interested in purchasing the lynx 5 robotic arm but without the electronics. I am just wondering whether or not I will be able to control this arm with my own microcontroller that I purchased from Motorola. The micro is the M68HC11E9.
Also, does the robotic arms base have a rotational freedom of 360 degrees.
I am trying to build a fully automatic robotic arm that will have the ability to rotate 360 degrees and automatically pick up 4 objects placed around it and move it to a desired specific destination. This will be done by implementing C++ code into the microcontroller via a serial RS-232 port and then send it out to the Lynx 5 Arm.
Is this possible at all ? How difficult will it be to implement such at idea ?
THANK YOU VERY MUCH… ANY INFORMATION OR IDEAS ARE GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!
I think there was another thread in which there was a discussion that said due to the base rotation servos you can’t do a 360 turntable type rotation. you can use any micro you want as long as you can get a botboard or some other type of servo controller/micro carrier.
If you’ve got a micro with a free UART or a basic I/O pin that you can bitbang with, it’ll be able to talk to the SSC-32.
I would recommend having the SSC-32 do the servo movement, instead of having your micro do it directly so that the micro does not get tied up.
If you stack two turntables on top of each other, each containing a servo that can move 180 degrees, you’ll have the 360 degrees you wish.
I’d ask Jim, though, if stacking turntables is possible…
No the objects will be in 4 set places and will not be able to move around. I am planning to use some sort of sensor…maybe a color sensor…to pick up certain objects and move them to their desired spots.
I have see this arm in a different thread moving colored M&M’s…im gone use the same basic principle.
Would anyone suggest using stepper or DC motors instead of the servos for this??? I don’t want to spend too much time designing this mechanism…I rather have it working ASAP.
If you don’t need high precision and you don’t need too much strength, go with the servos.
They’re easy to mount and easy to control.
They’ve already got their own gear reduction and speed controller onboard, so all you need is to send them pulses.
If you’re going to use a micro to control them directly, I’d suggest modifying digital (instead of analog) servos.
This way, you can “set it and forget it”.
With analogs, you’ll be a bit tied up, because you’ll have to send it pulses every 20ms (50Hz).
I’d suggest going with color sensors, rather than a color camera.
Fitting a color camera onboard can be expensive, since the processing will probably have to get wirelessly streamed to a PC.
I know that the Robosapien V2 has 3 color sensors on the top of it’s head.
Supposedly, its processor can do pretty decent color blob tracking with it.
Will I be able to program this robotic arm to automatically pick up objects and place them using C++ code and a microcontroller (M68HC11E9). I want to connect my microcontroller to the SSC-32 board and only using C++ code that will be uploaded to the micro to control the movement.
I really don’t/can’t use the programming interface that comes with the Lynx 5 robotic arm.
There is a complier for that microcontroller. I have used it before. I believe its the ghc11 compiler or something along those lines. I have used it and it works.
Certaintly.
If you’re micro has a UART, or if you’re willing to bitbang, you’ll be able to interface it directly with the TTL port of the SSC-32.
Controlling those servos directly is as easy as sending string of commands that you can see examples of in the SSC-32 manual, followed by a carriage return (some say a linefeed is required, too… give it a try).
Does anybody have C++ code that works with the SSC-32 inconjuction with a microcontroller. I would like to see example code how this is done.
Can someone please post this or email in directly to me at…[email protected]
To get 360 deg rotation from a regular servo, you make a simple pully type setup to increase the 180 deg servo rotation into 360 deg base rotation. Could be as simple as two plastic jar tops, one twice the diameter as the other, some string, and some glue.
Don’t get me wrong, I definitely agree that it could be that simple, and it’s been tried and proven before.
But, I think it’s best to stick to more-durable materials when one’s already spent quite a sum on the rest of the arm.
One can find inexpensive gears, sprockets, pulleys, you name it all over the internet and in many hobby shops.
I’m just answering the second post which hinted that 360 deg rotation can’t be done with servos. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what can be done with the $2.99 plastic lazy-susan at Wal-Mart.
