Marvin's Arm project progress.  My first thought with Marvin's base, was, "My students will break Marvin tin the first week..." so I updated the plexiglass base with 5/16 ply wood. 

Marvin's base -the drive motors and wheels is now safely clamed down in my home office.  Yes, I know, messy.

 I started (and have a ways to go to rewrite some of the original code.  Not because it did not work... It does.  But I need to make sure I understand every line, and tweak the documentation.  So I created a Marvin's GitHub site.  This is where I'll post more code, and labs for my students.  

As always happens with donated Robots, they have some issues.  I'm not complaining, as this is a fun challenge, and remember, Marvin was a Donation. 

Issue #1.  I could run the code that was in the Arduino, but I could not connect USB to it.  I was a Adafruit Metro Arduino, so that will take a bit more debugging to see if it's me or it.

Issue #2  I replaced the Adafruit Metro, with a Arduino Mega, and that all works, but the wires on the Shield are a bit high.  So a project down the road is to update the position of the Arduino.

Issue #3  The Wrist Servo does not seem to respond.  I can feel it holding a position, but is not changing position based on the code.  So, that's the next Debug step to trace these connections.

All the other joint servos work, and my next step there is to figure out the range.  Ralph provided some code, but I think some joints can move a bit farther... so I'm going to figure that out next.

Wish me luck.  Also make suggestions, and point me at sites and resources that will help me. As always, if you want to support my open source Engineering curriculum development you can always check out my "How To Help" page 

WooHooo, as a STEAM Teacher, it's always fun to leverage my connections, and get a robot donated. I have a few to document here, but as I'm working on Marvin, I'll start there.  Super Big Thank You to Ralph for passing Marvin and Marvin's Robot Arm  to me last week.

I checked out all the Arduino.ino file and the other information Ralph shared.  I followed his admonition to make sure I had Marvin's Robot Arm in a "safe" starting position.  Without knowing for sure what Arduino program was loaded, I powered on the Arm... WooHooo it moved. 

Check out this initial video of that first power on. If you want to keep track of this project as I figure out how to bring up Marvin's Arm, and figure out how I'm going to integrate Marvin into my class, Stay Tuned and watch this space for Marvin's Project Progress.

Here is my plan over the next few weeks... Note: Teacher ADD Brain had a panicked thought "CRAP, Summer is 1/2 way over..."  I'll be seeing my new students on Aug 7 2025. 

Plan over the next few weeks of summer:

• Update Marvin's Robot Club Pages:

  • Marvin's Arm - https://sites.google.com/view/steam-clown/robot-club/robot-arms/marvin-robot-arm  

• Update Marvin's GitHub Page with updated INO files:

  • https://github.com/jimTheSTEAMClown/Marvin-Robot-Arm 

  • Test recording positions

  • Test Joystick

  • Update fixed position object pick up

• Think about and plan some student Arduino Labs

Plan over the next year:

• Have a specific set of student labs, and curriculum for Arduino based / servo based Robot Arms

• Add a camera, and probably a module that is based on a Raspberry Pi

Wish me luck.  Also make suggestions, and point me at sites and resources that will help me. As always, if you want to support my open source Engineering curriculum development you can always check out my "How To Help" page - 

It's Summer... you would think that as a teacher I would be decompressing, and not thinking about school.  Ha Ha, You forget that I'm a Mechatronics Engineering STEAM Instructor.  That translates to "Fire Breathing Robots". That also means that I have a giant list of new stuff I want to add to my class.  Also... I'm never satisfied with my current curriculum, so I'm also planning on making changes there too. 

I'm a STEAM Clow, frantically pulling my hair out. 🤖 Stay tuned to my Summer exploits.