6-Axis Robot Comes to Life at a Lower Level
The 6-axis American Robot Merlin arm that was kindly donated to the lab by our friend Ken Kurzweil shows new signs of life! Nathan and Adam have been working with it recently. They are working on adding more support to the open-source EMC2 software for 6-axis robots, including teaching pendant support. A DIO card is needed for the host computer to facilitate hooking up the optical encoders and additional stepper drivers.
Here is a video of the robot motors moving based on sine and co-sine functions controlled by the lower HAL layer of EMC2:
http://youtu.be/WBDTU-sSixo
Just checking in with some updates
At HRGeeks ][ Matt Crainer gave a presentation on the progress of a laser pong game being developed.
Our friend Ken Kurzweil donated a real, industrial robot arm to the lab. It's made by American Robot and is a Merlin model. We're a bit of parts from making it work, but we know where we have to go to make it run! This is an exciting addition to the lab.
The Lan party was a new diversion from working on projects. It was fun, but won't be an every-month occurrence. I'm thinking we had 14 people playing.
Also there are some new projects that are really active, props to Kyle! More public information on his work soon!
Open hack night follow-up
Open hack night was another success. Vex was working on the laser engraver controller. Matt made some great progress with the laser-driven pong game (should be able to do a large building game of pong when this is done) and some other projects were going on. New people visited, new project ideas were formed, and we march on!
Oh yea, it looks like the lab is getting a donation from a friend. An industrial robot arm. The real deal. Trying to source some needed components. More news on this in the very very near future. It's insanely cool.