Josh Hendrickson
What do you do if you’re bored, have a Raspberry Pi and a 3D printed robot arm with no controller? Why make a robot arm that can serve drinks, of course! One intrepid Pi fan did just that and then did something even better. They posted the code so you can build one, too.
Over on Reddit, user dr2mod explained that they had all the parts lying around to make an arm controller, including 3D printed robot arms parts. But all on its own, that doesn’t do much. By getting together a Raspberry Pi Zero, a Servo Driver HAT for Raspberry Pi, four HD-1900A servos, and a PS4 Controller, they created a controllable robot arm.
In the proof of work video, you can see them testing picking up a straw and placing it in a cup, and it works surprisingly well. And ok, there’s a lot more to serving tables than providing straws; this is still a start. Imagine the other things you could pick up with this arm! Like pencils! Or markers!
You don’t actually have to imagine, either. If you want to build this yourself, you can thanks to dr2mod providing all the code on GitHub and a link to the 3D print files for the robot arm. You’ll have to source your own Raspberry Pi, Hat, and servos, but hey, the best things require a little work.
