Hi, We're going to take a quick look at the Ufactory Uarm 4axis Robotic arm. It's a Kickstarter project and you have seen this on my mailbag uh segment before. I Have shown it briefly. We'll take a little bit, uh, more look at it, but it'll be, uh, very brief.

I've got to upload this today, actually because the Kickstarter project ends in uh, 3 days time. So if you want to get one of these little, uh, uh, robotic arms, you better get in real quick. So let's take a look at it. now.

it's designed by a group of uh Hardware guys in Uh China so it will be designed and produced in China and uh, it is. as I said, a 4axis uh robot. So what the four? AIS Robotic arm. So what that means? It can move in that axis like that.

It can also move around like that. It goes to the end, stop there and there so it can almost do a full 180 there and it can, uh, raise up and down like that as well. Sorry, the suction cups aren't really sticking to my antistatic mat here at the moment and so that's three. And also, the head can rotate around like that.

So, and this one is fitted with a suction cup on it. and there's the suction pump on the back there so it can lift items up and move around. So it actually has quite a large operating range of movement. I Rather like that, and on the Kickstarter page, they do actually have a threedimensional, uh, you know, envelope threedimensional operating envelope of how it works over.

So in that aspect, it's not bad at all. Now it actually comes as a do-it-yourself kit. My one came fully assembled so I can't uh vouch for uh being you know the Uh kit itself and how easy it is to assemble. But I presume it's not that hard.

It comes with all the screws and bolts and everything else and just the individual pieces in this case made out of black acrylic. uh, like this. But it comes. You can order two versions, either a wood uh version, laser cut wood or laser cut acrylic like I've got here.

and the basic Uh kit for this thing is $185 but that doesn't come with a suction cup that comes with a uh gripper attachment that can you know grip things like that if you want the suction cup. I Believe that's about uh $219 uh for the kit I'm not sure how that compares to other fully assembled or kit robot arms on the market. I guess I I'm not really familiar with the market at all, but I I Think it, it doesn't represent bad value at all. Now, as far as the stability of this thing goes, it's not going to be great cuz it's not.

You know, solid metal. There is a bit of play in that if I hold that down like that I mean you know there? there's a little bit of jiggle in that you're not going to be able to use this thing as a fully repeatable pick and place machine down to millimeter or so. you might get maybe a millimeter, a couple of millimet repeatable accuracy or something like that. Haven't actually? uh, tried it because I don't have the firmware to enable well I don't have the software to enable.

you know, uh, just uh. accurate. uh, point-to-point repeatability tests and things like that. But yeah, like you're you're not going to be able to get submillimeter accuracy on this thing so you can forget about maybe, you know, using it as a homemade pick and place machine or something like that.

But it's going to be good to a few millimeters at at least, so it's got to be usable for something, that's for sure. If anything. hey, it's a fun toy and if we have a look in there, you can see the DC Servo motor for the head that allows it to rotate around like that and the suction cup on the bottom. Uh, as I mentioned, you can actually get different.

uh, gripper. You can get a gripper attachment and other attachments for this thing, or you can make your own. That's the whole idea. Oh, and of course the big thing about this, Of course that it is fully open source.

Uh, Hardware So all of the Hardware Designs will be available for download, presumably when it's uh, finished. I'm not sure if they're available yet and also all the the soft Uh software, the Um algorithms, and the code to actually uh drive this thing will all be open source so you can do anything you want with it. Fantastic! And for those who are familiar with their DC Servo Motors, this one's got 1501 on it power Something brand I'm not entirely sure what, but uh, of course that is one of the main limitations of this thing is that it only uses DC Servo Motors not uh, repeatable steer Motors but they say hey, they might release a steeper motor version in the future. But the moment yet the biggest limitation here are these: DC Servo Motors But it still makes a useful robot.

So you can see that this DC servo motor here just controls that lever arm there up and down which then moves without having this main arm move here actually changes the pivot point for that arm right up there at the pivot point. So it is a rather clever design. I Like it. it is supposedly modeled on uh, one of like an ABB brand industrial robot um or something like that.

but I think it's very Loosely based but still, it's a neat design and of course the neat thing about it is is that this head always stays vertical no matter where in the axis range you put it, it is always B vertical by uh, virtue of how they've designed the arms and the pivot Points but you know that's standard part of the course for these. Road But if you don't get that right, hey, you've screwed something up. and as far as the wiring goes on this I mean my one came fully assembled so you can, uh, if you got the kit, you can assemble it any way you want. but I've got just the cables.

just the three-way uh, ribbon cables to each DC Servo Motor: They're just sort of, you know, flapping around in the breeze there. but they are. They aren't going to get caught on anything like that so it looks like you know it, it's going to. You don't really have to worry too much about that, but you could tidy up the cable management on your own.

final build. and there's the DC motor for the vacuum pump. That's a an optional mechanism. Of course, if you go for the gripper attachment, you won't actually get uh, this included in the package.

so you would have that uh platform just uh, free to mount anything you like on. And of course there's another DC servo motor right in there which handles the rotation of the base platform here. and it does come standard with these uh, suction cups. and by the way, this build this was the very first one that they uh built and shipped.

I was uh, the first backer of this Kickstarter project. So I got the very first one. I Believe they've made some design improvements um in various areas since this one, so don't take this one as an absolute finished product and what they've got here is just a Um Arduino Uno compatible board. It's not a genuine Arduino one and they've done the micro arm uh sorry I call it the micro arm, it's actually U AR and their company name is U Factory as in u it's your arm, it's your factory I guess and there's the Open Source Hardware logo brilliant and uh, they have since um said that they've and shown photos that they've redesigned this thing entirely.

So they've integrated this motor Shield onto the main board down here and that's a really good idea cuz when I first got this I plugged it in, it comes with a 5V uh power adapter with it and of course I plugged in the USB and I plugged in my 5V power into the Arduino bought up here and then the thing didn't work and I had to email them said hey, it didn't work and they sort of I guess they were giggling and said no, you've got to actually plug this into the shield down the bottom there I didn't see that it was tucked away. another 5vol DC jack tucked away right down in the bottom down in there to power the motors well. Enough talk. Let's plug this thing in and see what she does.

Whoa there we go. it zip back to a home position I guess and here is their Kickstarter page and they've absolutely smashed their target. They're only going for a $5,000 goal. Got 3 days left.

sorry about the late notice of the video I've been putting it off, putting it off or had other things doing, but they're up to $164,000 $856 Backers Fantastic! And uh, here's their website over here. They do have some other Uh products as well. They got like a balance in platform and other stuff like that and uh, you can download the Um software from this site and the software is very, very simple. The only thing that they've got at the moment is a little mouse control program like this and it really shows that this product is designed by a bunch of.

Hardware Engineers Because the software as it stands at the moment is the biggest let down of this thing by far. it it very primitive. It allows you to operate the thing with the mouse as we'll see, but it doesn't do anything else. I Don't even have access to the Uh to to the commands the serial commands to actually talk to this thing.

maybe it is on their website and I just haven't uh looked. But anyway, um, you have to install the Arduino software first all the Arduino Uh drivers. CU It identifies itself as an Arduino Uno So uh, you just uh install the Arduino software and then you just run this mouse control program. There's no install, it's just a simple XE Um, Comport 3 is what it's hooked up to.

uh, 9600 board and that's it and you start it and woohoo, this is all we got. This is all you get with it is this mouse control program. But what this mouse program allows me to do it is fairly intuitive. I can just use move my mouse forward, move it back and left, right, and then up and down with the scrolly uh, the scroll wheel on the thing and it really is quite easy and intuitive just to play around with and operate this robot.

Of course this is just like a demo type thing. The real power with this thing comes when you can actually script it with serial commands and they do apparently have some software that allows it to what learn thing. So I can bring this down like this and I press that and suction and I can lift up my little lens there. Oh no.

dropped it. There we go. It couldn't hold that, couldn't hold that lens it was before Oh No, ah fail. So I'm trying to pick up this uh 100 G lens here, but yeah, it doesn't seem to be doing it.

I'm not sure if it's just the uh surface isn't quite good enough for the suction cup. That could certainly be it. Okay, let's try that again. There we go, there, we go.

Yeah, it's just a matter of the surface a Bubba but it can certainly pick up. Whoa. The suction cups can I get it to flip? Can I get it to flip? Will it flip? I Don't know. Yay! Okay, so let's pick up a micro ruler that should be real easy.

Doesn't weigh anything, only weighs a couple of grams. But uh, it really is quite fun to. uh, quite fun to play with If I hold down the Uh Mouse uh, hold down the right button and then do the scroll wheel I can get it to uh, rotate that around I Don't haven't figured out how to actually release the uh suction yet? Not entirely sure if you can, you probably can, but I haven't figured out how to do it. There you go.

But it does work. Ah, it's neat. It's actually quite a fun toy to play with, and as you can probably hear it just uh, every couple of seconds, it, just, uh, red, do that. uh.

suction cup. I'm not sure if you can, uh, disable that or whether or not that's part of the algorithm actually built into the Uh Arduino uh itself that uses to control this. but anyway, the Arduino controller in there has all of the reverse kinematic algorithms to uh, that basically means that uh, this robot arm you can control using XY coordinate so you can say you know, go to this point, go back, go back and it handles all of the algorithms of how to actually figure out how to get there and step over to there and move and coordinate the arm to a given three-dimensional coordinating B But as I said, I don't actually have the serial commands yet to actually uh, you know, program this to do anything I've only got just the uh little mouse uh program just to muck around with it, but even that's quite good. but because it's all open- Source uh hardware and software, all that stuff will be released and you'll be able to play with it to your heart's content.

Fantastic! So there you go. That's a quick look at the uh, well, the very first uh U Factory uarm released and if you want one of these little fun little toys there, I is as I said, 3 days left in the kickstarter campaign and yeah, this is just so much fun I have no idea what I'm going to use it for I Don't think I really have any real practical uh use for a 4axis robot. Um, on my bench here a bench mount uh version, but you know I I don't know the uses are limited by your imagination I guess it's an okay design like physically but as it's implemented the build quality is fine of it. but of course there are just you're always going to get the limitations based on the acrylic and Uh build and all that sort of stuff in the DC Servo Motors.

and of course, the biggest thing with this sort of stuff is what software? uh, tools you get to actually control? The thing that is going to be the bigger, uh kicker no pun intended. But they do say that with the Kickstarter money, they are going to hire um, real software programmers to, uh, work on developing, uh, various software apps and things like that. But really, if you got the serial commands, that's all you need. Because you can, you know, write your own programs and your own, uh, control stuff to control your own little personal benchtop robot arm.

anyway. I Hope you like that quick look at it. If you want to discuss it, jump on over to the Evev blog forum and I will provide a link to the Kickstarter down below. Catch you next time! Um,.