If you’re going to hack a robot, it’s a good idea to have a clue about what you’re doing. With this in mind I decided to take a few practice shots, so to speak, before the main shooting match. This is a fancy way of saying I wanted some practice. So I bought a few robotic kits from Amazon.com. The first one I bought was an OWI EDGE Robotic Arm. Why they call it “EDGE” and why they capitalize that part of the name I don’t know. It may end up one of those mysteries of life we never understand.
It showed up and I placed the box contents on my desk to get a look at the many pieces. There were an awful lot of them. My boldness suffered slightly when I discovered that, like my Spykee, this thing had a zillion parts and its instructions were a series of pictographs; drawings that showed what part went where. Pictographs are like a foreign –no, make that alien– language. Perhaps it was written for robots. I don’t know.
I plowed ahead and discovered that actually the photo of the completed and working arm on the box was more instructive than the instructions. In total, it took me about three hours of work to assemble it.
The OWI EDGE Robotic Arm
While the robot is entirely functional, it isn’t particularly useful. It cannot be programmed to perform some repetitive task like an industrial robot, it only operates under direct, human control. I bought a PC based controller for it that works over USB. I hoped that it might permit some programming, but it turned out to be merely a graphical interface that replaced the wired controller it came with. Considering that the USB controller cost $69 and the robot cost me the same, I felt a little ripped off.
But the arm went together pretty well and it works pretty well, and it does look kind of cool sitting on my desk. I am glad I didn’t buy the more expensive arm made by the same company; it was almost $100 and is basically a prettier version than the one I have. I doubt that it is worth the $30 increase in price merely to have one that’s all black.
But building it did show me a lot of what I was looking to see. Chained servos, lift, rotation, and grasping are all represented. Plus that, it helped me a little more to understand the assembly process and to order my efforts properly. I don’t resent the cost of $150 all told, but I could have picked a better robot for the money I spent.