MeArm - Your Robot

It's been a while since we've updated this project but there's been a lot of metaphorical water (and physical water) under both real and metaphorical bridges.

MeArm became a business in its own rights, supplying the mighty but short-lived Hackaday store, the amazing Adafruit, and the international RS components. We employed someone to run the lasers and a while later we formed another company, called Mime Industries, were we took on a drawing robot called the Mirobot and planned to make more products for makers and fans of open source worldwide.

Things went well for a while, we employed another person, and got an even bigger laser. A kickstarter for the Raspberry Pi version followed, and we fulfilled that with no issues. Personally I struggled with the split of labour in the business where I was managing the production and fulfilment and no longer making product decisions. We launched the version 2.0 which massively reduced the build time, introduced a PCB to the bill of materials, and relied on nitrile bands to hold it together. It was launched along with the MeArm Pi with mixed reviews as to it's stability. 

While the company wasn't perfect my dad passing away suddenly hit me very hard, the company started to struggle as I was running the sharp end of things. Things wound down somewhat and as directors we went our separate ways with in the company. I closed up our office and sadly made the two people who'd joined us redundant, with plenty of notice and on the best possible terms. It was sad but I was in no state to carry on carrying the weight of a company.

Eventually MeArm was licenced to a company called Kitronik, who are a very lovely bunch. I redesigned the MeArm, removing the nitrile bands, but keeping the PCB (for now). This version 3.0 is the current version. Is still quick to build but has better stability and a simplified bill of materials. I also joined Kitronik for a time as a staff member and continued to support the MeArm as a product.

Working for Kitronik was a great experience, but I was offered the chance to do some freelance design and took the opportunity. Later I decided to take the MeArm back "in house" which is essentially in my workshop, a building I built at the end of my garden. 

That's where we are today. The version 3.0 is the current build, but I'd love to reconnect with Hackaday to redesign a fourth version. A version where we say goodbye to the PCB, which is essentially a $2 solution to a 10 cents problem, and also a big barrier to entry for those wishing to make their robot at home. There are some other fixes and changes on the list too, but we'll have an open discussion about that on here as we progress.

Thank you for following the project, and I hope this update is of some interest. Massive thanks for supporting me and the project over the last decade. If you want to try out the current state of the MeArm check out our (my) store at mearm.com

So it's been a while in coming but I finally took a look into running the MeArm on a Raspberry Pi. I've not done this before because mainly I find the Pi a Pig to work with. Really I find the set up frustrating when I could just use USB into my PC for better hardware hacking. But hey ho, lots of folks love the Raspberry Pi so I should really be looking at it a little more!

It was actually a lot easier than I expected to get the PWM outputs working on the GPIO, thanks to some software called Servo Blaster. The Fritzing image below is actually a little more complex than it needs to be, but making it simpler would have made it look more complex...

I've put together a WIP over on the MeArm site blog.

Some great new docs done this week! Full guide on how build our all included kit and also a new guide on setting up a MeArm on an Arduino. All available on our resources page!

I'll get the links updated on here too. But now onto the weekend!!

This would appear to be at least derivative number five and I'm really looking forward to the chance to go over the files of this one! The #eeArm has come to us via South Africa where it was part of a Tech Street Market project.

Looks like there have been some savings in the acrylic, which I would have thought might have weakened the structure a little, but I'm keen to see how it performs!

The finished article is a little funkier looking than our original. Really want to get one of these for the collection!

Putting together all the data we have to hand at MeArm Robotics we were able to cobble together this map showing the city or town where our robots have ended up. We'd like to make something to collect data on wild arms too, so if web forms to googlemaps is something you know about please get in touch!

We've had some really amazing contributions to the MeArm project and this weekend another one popped up on my twitter feed. A chap called Daniel Bailey put together a guide on running the MeArm with Inverse Kinematics (IK) - where you tell it where to go via coordinates rather than angles to point the servos at.
It's a really great guide which covers some concepts that need addressing in the MeArm instructions, like calibration. It also has great photographs:

It's amazing that someone has taken the time to do this work and it really makes the work we're putting in worth while! Many thanks Daniel, now everyone go and check out his site at Bit Of A Hack.

Points (skulls maybe) for a pun title please! Don't know if it's the black background or the sexy gold skull but I do love to write on the Hackaday.io site. Sorry that's a pointless aside. The point is that the MeArm has been shown to work rather well with the Intel RealSense Camera, as shown by the talented Bryan Brown on his youtube channel.

I thought this was impressive and wrote another blog about it at blog.mearm.io where I'm putting the majority of MeArm news these days. Only wish I had more time to write it all!

Update: The winner of the MeArm Giveaway Random Draw is @Fidel salinas who mentioned @AFSLabs in their comment. We'll be in touch via private messaging to find out where to send the MeArms!

Commiserations to everyone else who entered. Don't forget to follow or skull the #181. #MeArm - Pocket Sized Robot Arm project, or if you are really desperate for a MeArm you can buy one over at the Hackaday Store.

Couldn't make it to Hackaday Munich? Heard about the great Robot Workshop? Well, we've got a pair of Limited Edition Hackaday Munich MeArms to giveaway to two lucky Hackaday.io members so they can experiment at home.

A big thanks to @ben.phenoptix for letting us hijack his project for a week, and for sending out the MeArms to the winners.

How to enter

All you need to do is leave a comment on this Project Log sharing this project with another member who you think would also love a MeArm.

You do this by using our new @username and #projectid feature e.g.

"@Adam Fabio, I've entered us into the MeArm giveaway. Check out
#181. #MeArm - Pocket Sized Robot Arm for more details."

Only leave one comment with mentions. You can comment more, but only your first comment with mentions will be entered in the draw. Comments without both a @username and #projectid mention will be ignored for the purpose of the draw.

Deadline

You need to leave your comment before midnight Jan 11 2015. On the Jan 12, we'll draw the winner at random, let everyone know who they are, and post the MeArms out to their new homes.

Got questions?

If you have any questions regarding the giveaway, you can ask them in the Project Log comments.

The MeArm was lucky enough to be invited along to the Hackaday Prize Party in Munich. Since the MeArm was going to be used in the Roboto workshop we thought we'd make a little something special to honour the occasion. That was the Hackaday Prize Party Special Limited Edition MeArm!

25 were made for the event and boy were they made for the event! All assembled in the bar the night before the event by hard pressed Hackaday staff or by myself and willing volunteers at the prize party. Being tired and emotional at the end of the MeArm build marathon it seems I forgot one thing! The spares! We'd actually produced 28 as we expected there to be a few breakages. Since they were minimum it means we actually have three Limited Edition Hackaday Prize MeArms (numbered 26/25, 27/25 and 28/25) left!

Been a while since my last project update and so much has happened with the MeArm. I've promised some time this week to get my Hackaday.io blog up to date now the preparations for the MeBrain Kickstarter have finished and we've launched!
The MeBrain is an Arduino-Compatible built on the Mega32u4. We want to make it as simple as possible to use the MeArm, but also pack so much cool stuff under the hood that you can't help but want to tinker.

The Kickstarter has gone well and reached target in just over 24 hours! We've just added some stretch goals to give us something new to aim at!