The good folks of element14 were kind enough to send me this awesome robot arm as part of a contest reward shopping cart. Thank you element14 team!
It has a lot of little pieces to put together. Good thing I had help!
After a fun afternoon building this cool 3-D puzzle, this is what it looked like:
There were a few parts that didn't quite fit - the tolerances appear to be very tight, and for two of the parts I needed to do some light sanding to have it all fit properly (and believe me, I tried plenty of angles first before doing that).
The assembly video helped quite a bit though, to compare how things fit together. The instruction pamphlet by itself lacked a few details, including the placement of the wires, and it misses a crucial step in getting the examples running - a library needs to be installed first. The website helps for that.
One thing that was a bit harsh is that the first example sets all the servos to their proper middle position - the instructions say you then have to adjust the servos if the robot arm isn't perfectly straight. 
That would mean pretty much taking the whole thing apart! The arm is pretty close the way it is, and maybe the code can be adjusted to compensate.
I moved it to my desk to complete the final steps, and so I could hook it up to my computer to program the Arduino to control it.
This robot arm kit comes complete with the Arduino shield to run all the servos. It also includes the special 4 amp 5v adapter to power all of it properly.
The only thing needed to complete it is the Arduino microcontroller. I used the Arduino Uno I had available, but it does support several other Arduino boards, including the WiFi versions that then allow control via an app, which would have been cool too.
Here it is showing off its pet unicorn.
My conclusion?
Two thumbs up!
it's a fun project to build, easy to operate with Arduino code, and I can see it being used in fun silly future projects.
-Nico
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