New Distributor! RaspberryStore.nl
Great news today that a new distributor came on board with an order for the delectable Heisenberg Blue #MeArm
Raspberrystore.nl stock a great range of Raspberry Pi Accessories and the first distributor of the #MeArm in the Netherlands. We’ll update you and link when the product goes live. They’re currently flat sheets awaiting laser time!
If you’d like to stock the #MeArm get in touch for distributor pricing and we’ll get you onboard! ben at phenoptix dot com
Read moreSalesforce goes Internet of Things with MeArm
I’ve been trying to track down a video of this for a while and fortunately one was sent to me today
In this video when a sale is made in Salesforce the #MeArm “ships” the product, well it throws it on the floor. But that is pretty much what couriers do right? (If any couriers are reading this we really appreciate your hard work and careful handling of our delicate robotics products (except if you’re the UPS doofus who dropkicked Adafruit’s last order…)). This #MeArm was shipping products all through the Dreamforce conference 2014.
Read moreMeArm at the Leeds City Museum
We were lucky enough to be invited along to the March of the Robots event in Leeds in the UK. The plan was to take five #MeArms and five controllers along for some tough product testing in the hands of a hoard of Mine Craft fans! Our luck continued as two students from the Mechatronics and Robotics department at Leeds University joined me for the day to perform much needed running repairs to our prototype robot arms.
The reason we needed the running repairs were two fold. First that some of the bots were the test units coming from our new production line at Loughborough and had more generous tolerances than strictly were required. The second was that it would seem when two or more boys have access to two or more robots they like to make them fight. Since one of our selling points is that the #MeArm is cheap enough to break and simple enough to repair we could hardly put a stop to this primitive version of Robot Wars.
The experience watching how physical kids wanted to be with the robots was invaluable looking at improving the design and of the different prototype control boards we took a long we learned a lot. People like the idea of joysticks and inverse kinematics but with the random movements first attempted by the majority of the kids at the event the direct servo control was easier to grasp and master. The final version should really be able to switch between the two control methods.
It was a great day out and we were really fortunate to be involved. Many thanks to Playful Leeds for having us at the event.
Read moreAs seen on TV! MeArm on the Gadget Show (UK)
Quite shocking that it’s been three months since the last project update on hackaday.io! So much has been going on with the #meArm project and the business that created it (well it was me (Ben) but for phenoptix, which was also me).
The super secret project that the #meArm maxi was built for was for a TV show in the UK where they wanted to knock down a building using a digger controlled via a robot arm. Unfortunately I had very little hands on time with the machine we used and just sent the maxi down for testing. A couple of issues meant the maxi was under powered and ultimately left out of contention. I did manage to accompany Shay who’s company Running in the halls (RITH) did all of the software work for the piece during filming and help cobble together the Mechano solution. This meant the #meArm was part of the story and did at least get used as a prop during filming! I did even get a one second cameo myself! I’m the blurry guy with the beard in the background
