Made a ton of progress the past 7 days! The  second revision of the arm got built. The only problem that required a reprint was the shoulder gear. Originally, I didn't have any support in the middle of the gear which allowed it to bend pretty easily which then caused the arm to skip teeth when under any load. I fixed that by adding spokes for support in the shoulder gear. I went ahead and did the same for the elbow gear just for good measure.

The new design had immediate improvements for the lifting capacity. When using the smaller 23HS22, it was able to lift a full kilogram 18 inches from the pivot, which is twice as much as before. For good measure I upgraded the shoulder motor to a 23HS45 which was able to lift 2.5 kilograms at 18 inches from the pivot.

The full build has a load capacity of 1 kg, which is more than enough for a gopro, may even be able to do a larger camera! 

(I ran out of bolts so there is an allen wrench being used on the shoulder pivot, which is fiinnnnneeee)

The next step was creating the rotating base. For this I printed "v-wheels" to use with some 608 bearings. I arranged them around an internal spur gear that is then rotated by another nema 23 stepper motor.

With the base built, I was able to put the full arm together:

From there I took the original pan/tilt module for the gopro, added another servo, added a mounting bracket, and put it on the end of the arm to finish out the build of prototype 0. 

List of mechanical changes that I'll do for the next full rev:

• find ways to improve arm stability
• remove  all 3d printed threads (they work great for one time use but get destroyed too easily)
• create a stiffer elbow linkage bracket that isn't wood
• add rotation sensors to all stepper motors
• buy 8 mm bolts that are the correct length for all of the pivots
• reprint base pinion gear
• try switching to a carbon-fiber/poly carbonate filament (PLA was held up really well but I'd like a stronger plastic for the final version)
• try switching to continuous rotation servos for the camera gimbal

There's a ton to do mechanically, but prototype 0 is far enough along that I can really focus on the electronics and programming for the next week.

Once I have some initial code, I plan to do a full release of stls, code, and parts list for version 0. So look forward to that!

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