Few issues excite the creativeness of a {hardware} hacker greater than large, highly effective robots. Ought to a 3,000-pound industrial robotic seem of their driveway sooner or later, an individual with a penchant for toying with machines could disappear into their storage for the following a number of months, solely to briefly reappear when their provide of vitality drinks begins to dip dangerously low. However this sort of pastime is for a choose few, as massive industrial robots sometimes promote for tens to tons of of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Nonetheless, as YouTuber Extreme Overkill identified in a current video, you don’t must be a belief fund child to get your palms on a significantly cool industrial robotic. Outdated machines which are beginning to present their age might be picked up for pennies on the greenback. Extreme Overkill scored a $40,000 robotic for the worth of a Raspberry Pi 500+ on this method, together with a workshop full of comparable bargains. However these bargains do include loads of hidden prices by way of elbow grease that you’ll have to put into their restore.
The open supply controller (📷: Extreme Overkill)
The robots themselves are incessantly in fairly good condition, however it’s the management programs which are the true drawback. The electronics turn into out of date, lose their reminiscence, and the producers might be of no assist in getting you again on monitor. It is for that reason that Extreme Overkill spent the final two years engaged on a customized, open supply controller for industrial robots. It’s based mostly on Arm chips that run a Linux working system with an Artix-7 FPGA that has been programmed to immediately interface with the encoders and motor drivers that energy a robotic’s actions.
Even with all this assist, you continue to have to have plenty of domain-specific information to get a brand new machine up and operating (to not point out plenty of free house in your house). The controller can interface with nearly any robotic on the market in concept, however the communication protocol must be labored out first. Chances are high, loads of different issues will want attending to as properly.
The FPGA growth board (📷: Extreme Overkill)
So for individuals who shouldn’t have an industrial robotic of their future, Extreme Overkill made an interactive show for Open Sauce the place they’ll strive one out. It makes use of a 3D mouse as a controller. Because the mouse is moved in three-dimensional house, the robotic copies its actions. This was made potential by studying the outputs of the mouse’s encoders with an STM32 microcontroller, then feeding that data into the robotic’s controller.
Extreme Overkill confirmed how pure this interface was to make use of. It made brief work of stacking blocks and selecting up different {hardware}. It was even correct sufficient to put in writing with, nonetheless the dearth of power suggestions made it troublesome to keep away from crushing the writing floor.
Whether or not you wish to get into the world of commercial robots, otherwise you simply need to reside vicariously via Extreme Overkill, this video just isn’t one to overlook.
