Should I buy a 3-axis robot arm or a 6-axis robot arm? By the way, can you explain the reasons?
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Hey Lance,
That one is completely up to you and depend on what you will be using it for. 6-axis will be more capable but probably cost more, and 3-axis will be easier to program and most likely cheaper.
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Hey, thanks for the reply! So what interface is the 3-axis robot arm using to communicate?
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Hey Lance,
Sorry I’m not too sure what you mean by this, there are lots of different communication protocols that you could use and depending on the safety needed. CANBUS has a level of safety to it along with a current varied supply (4-20mA, so if the circuit becomes open it trips a fault and same if it goes over). There are some premade out their oriented towards makers to hack and throw together their own spin on it
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Hey Lance and Liam,
I’d be keen to see what you come up with! I’d love to see some mechatronic systems on here 
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Hi Liam.
Since the LCD I’m going to use has a UART serial port, it would be nice if the robotic arm also had a corresponding interface. If not I will consider using MCU for control.
I will update here as soon as I have progress. 
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Hey Lance,
Most microcontrollers these days have some form of UART and same with SBC’s.
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I’m here to update the progress, I’ve purchased a 6-axis robotic arm and I’m controlling it through the serial screen and Arduino uno for grabbing.
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And here is the video I recorded.
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Looks great Lance! Are you going to pre-program any movements or just use it as a remote control type thing? I could see some awesome expansion on this project with any number of sensors! A great one for robotic arms is colour sorting M&M’s/Smarties/anything else multicoloured into separate piles.
The easiest way to get started would be to sort two different colours (pick a light colour and a dark colour) of M&M’s. You can use a photoresistor or a photodiode:
http://bildr.org/2012/11/photoresistor-arduino/
Try setting your photoresistor/diode on the tip of your robot arm within a small tube, like a small piece of straw. That way you can protect your reading from ambient light changes. You can also place a blue LED for example inside the tube with your photoresistor to provide some reflective light for detecting M&M colour!
There are some great tutorials out there and it’s a fun little project that might take your Robotic Arm to the next level!
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I think remote control might be a good idea, I can use esp32 or other microcontroller with wifi, because my LCD also has wifi capability, maybe remote control through wifi or bluetooth.
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