Robot Blog Index

  • MechArm 270 Pi- Learning Curve

    Some entry-level robots come with an easy-to-use programming interface that allows a user to start making motion sequences right out of the box. It would be remiss of me to say that was my experience with the Mecharm 270 Pi. The robot has some nice features, but it doesn’t have an intuitive slider or drag…

  • Elephant Robotics MechArm 270 Pi: Get it to Move with myBlockly

    There is a good ending to this story, but it took a while to get there. For the video of these instructions, you can scroll down to the end of this post. If you’ve purchased a Mecharm 270 Pi, or are thinking about it, read on for my experience. Spoiler Alert: it’s a great compact…

  • The Elephant in the Room

    Such an obvious title… Late last year I started looking for a sub-$1000 6-axis robot I could use in my videos & tutorials. I wanted something that had better / smoother motion than the low-cost educational models that are all over the internet, but it’s difficult to evaluate performance from a online videos (usually from…

  • Mecademic Meca 500 Diode Soldering Practice

    Having a soldering iron, a few build-a-breadboard kits, and a precision robot, it was only a matter of time before I made a robotic soldering video. In another video- Mecademic Meca 500 Diode Loading Demo – we saw how the Meca 500 had the precision and agility to pick ‘n’ place diodes with delicate, easily-bent…

  • Why Not Teach a Robot to Play a Kalimba

    Why Not Teach a Robot to Play a Kalimba

    Especially a robot with the exceptional precision & control of the Mecademic 500. This was just a short trial run, me basically playing around to see if: The first kalimba I tried is a nice basic unit with lovely tone, it’s been a lot of fun as an introduction to the instrument. You can check…

  • Loadcell Project

    When you need to weigh things, repeatedly.. A rainy weekend, a load cell, a robot, and a raspberry pi all got together… ok, this is a small project that is part of a larger project that I’m doing in stages. And, keen eyes will have spotted that the unit in the image above is of…

  • Merry Christmas 2023

    The year has just flown by, and here we are in the Festive Season again. It made sense to do a skit with the robots helping Santa out by palletizing presents (which are then loaded to shipping containers which conveniently fit in Santa’s sled). OK, so to be truthful I’ve been struggling with some Ned…

  • How-To Video: The Difference TCP Makes

    TCP, or Tool Center Point, is a tool which can make your machine set-up less time-consuming by giving you the ability to re-use a set of coordinated instructions between different tools. In this video, I show how to use different TCPs to achieve the same end result with probes of different lengths. Link to Video…

  • The Hurling Video

    Playing around with TCP settings on the Mecademic one day, and this morphed into the thought that it would be fun to have a robotic sporting match to showcase this very useful function. Basketball was out (couldn’t figure out how to dribble the ball repeatably), and soccer didn’t seem practical given the lack of legs…

  • Getting to Grips with Grippers

    In many automated assembly applications, a well-thought-out custom gripper design is essential. In this article I’ll talk about the process and iterations needed to accomplish the Meca 500 Diode Load sequence in RoboFiesta’s Mecademic Meca 500 Diode Loading Demo on YouTube. Some of the things you’ll need to consider are: For a part in a…