3D Printed Robotic Hand Project Revisision

After repairing the robotic hand project, the most noticeable flaw was the nest of wires on the receiver. Every servo motor has three wires, with five fingers that means there are fifteen leads going into the breadboard. From there five additional wires need to run to the Arduino for signal control. This leaves this sort of mess:

To solve this mess, I jumped into Circuit Maker, a free PCB design tool from Altium. After selecting my parts I designed this very simple schematic:

With the schematic drawn up I created a PCB file and placed all the components. Normally, routing should be done by hand, but in a circuit as simple as this it really saves a good chunk of time. After running the auto routing I had this:

Each finger will have a 3-pin header, similar to the Power header, and all the signal wires will go from the 5-pin header at the top (labeled OUTPUT). Since all the servo headers will plug directly into the board most of the excess wires will be eliminated.

-Andrew

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 8--The Wiring Diagram of the Hand and Codes for Adafruit Servo Shield

So in this post I will be going over the wiring of the 3D printed Inmoov hand and include images of the wiring with the use of the program Fritzing since I did not really go into detail of how I wired the hand when using it without the Adafruit Servo shield. To me, Fritzing is a very useful program that includes many popular boards and components to be able to recreate a wiring layout. Again, this wiring is set up to be used without the Adafruit Servo shield. Doing this can help reduce costs of the project. I will also be covering the codes that I did use when I was trying to use the Adafruit Servo shield. 

The Wiring of the Inmoov Hand

So I did not really go into detail on how to wire the robotic hand. This wiring setup is meant to be used without the Servo shield from Adafruit. It will just rely on the use of the Servo library of the Arduino IDE. Using the Adafruit Servo shield will require a different wiring setup.

The above image is the wiring diagrm of the Inmoov hand. The five servos are powered by an external supply, the 4 AA batteries. The 4AA batteries should should supply enough power to the servos. The battery power supply is connected to the power rails that is found on the top of the breadboard. The ground of the batteries is connected to the blue rail while the power (positive) of the batteries is connected to the rail next to the red line on the breadboard. The blue rail is the ground rail while the red rail is the power rail.

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 7--The Last Codes Used (No Servo Shield Required)

     The last time I wrote a post for this project, I didn't post the codes that I was using for the arm and glove. The codes that I last used were the codes I used to control the hand without the servo shield from Adafruit. This can help you save you little bit of money by not having to buy that shield

     Also, this codes seems to be much easier to understand and to calibrate the ranges for the flex sensors. 

     So the code for the glove is as follows:

// This will be the code for the glove. I got parts from two different existting glove codes.

// One from Garbry295 on Instuctables and the other from dschurman from 

// instructables as well.

int flexpinky   = A0;

int flexring    = A1;

int flexmiddle  = A2;

int flexindex   = A3;

int flexthumb   = A4;

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600);  

  

pinMode(flexpinky,  INPUT);

pinMode(flexring,   INPUT);

pinMode(flexmiddle, INPUT);

pinMode(flexindex,  INPUT);

pinMode(flexthumb,  INPUT);

}

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 6 -- More Programming and Debugging

           

With how I left things the last time, I wasn't getting the full range of motion of the servos. So this wouldn't let me close the hand all the way. Some fingers barely moved at all. So I did some more programming and debugging the programs for the hand and glove. But I still couldn't get the full range. Then I just decided to just rewrite the whole program this time without having the need to use the Adafruit Servo shield to control the servos. I referenced

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 5 -- Programming and Debugging

Now that I have finished building the hand and the glove, it was time to start writing the programs for the hand and glove. For the glove, I simply just used the code from an Instructables. It was created by Gabry295. The link to the instructable is:

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 4 -- The 3D Printed Hand Build

In this post I will be going over in the building of the 3D printed hand. You can find the files from inmoov.fr. Inmoov is an open source 3D printed life size robot where you can print various parts of a robot. Here you can find the files to print the hand. I also found an instructable on instructables.com that has the files already ready to just download and print.

http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Robotic-Hand-Controlled-by-a-Glove-and-Arduino/

I started by printing the smaller prints at a few files at a time.

A printout of a finger and circular horns for the servos

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 3 -- The Glove Build

In this post I will be going over in the making of the glove that will control the 3D printed hand. I started off by first soldering the 5 47K ohm resistors onto the LilyPad's pads a0, a1, a2, a3, and a4. I also soldered the resistors together as shown in the picture below.

From there I went ahead and started to create holes at the top of each flex sensor by using a needle. I will be sowing through this hole to the glove to create a good attachment to the glove.

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 2 -- Pre-build

Design:

For the design of the robotic portion of this project I will be using a 3D printed hand that was created by InMoov. InMoov is a open source 3D printed life size robot. The link to their website is:

www.inmoov.fr

InMoov provided the 3D printed files that I am currently in the process of finishing printing. The color I used for the hand will be glow in the dark green since it was the most abundant of PLA that was in stock here at Boca Bearing. I still have some more parts that I need to print. At the moment the 3D printer is down due to connection issues but should be fixed soon.

To control the robotic hand I will be using a regular glove that I will be getting soon probably from Wal-Mart. The glove doesn't have to be special. It just has to be fabric and have space where I can sow the flex sensors and the LilyPads onto.

Materials List and Cost:

As mentioned in the previous phase, I have compiled the list of the materials that I will be using for this project. The parts that I ordered from SparkFun.com are the following: 5 4.5 inches flex sensors for the fingers, $12.95 each, to detect when the hand is being closed in a fist or open.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8606

A LilyPad Arduino Board with 6 analog inputs, $19.95, to program it with the flex sensors. And a LilyPad FTDI adapter for $17.95. Without the adapter, I won't be able to program the LilyPad.

3D Printed Robotic Hand: Part 1 -- Project proposal

April 7, 2015: Gerardo Ramos

Purpose/Goal:

The purpose of this project is to learn to use a 3D printer and to further my skills in using the Arduino. My goal is to have a functional hand that will mimic my hand movements through the use of a glove with flex sensors attached to it. The robotic hand will be assembled out of 3D printed parts from files that were obtained from an open source project called InMoov.

Initial Design Concept:

The design of the hand is already pre-made from the project InMoov that provides all the 3D printable files. The other part of this project would be just a glove where I will attach flex sensors and a LilyPad Arduino placed on top of the glove.

Materials: