During the Christmas season I found the time to create another project from the book published in 1985 entitled “Make And Program Your Own Robots for the Commodore 64 and VIC-20” I started blogging about here.
I skipped the project called “Card Reader”, some kind of punch(ed) card reader able to translate holes punched in a piece of cardboard into binary code. Maybe I will try that some other time.
This time I created the Mini Arm project. It requires two 4.5V motors and some pretty intricate wiring. I made a copy of the page and used different color felt tip pens to make the schema more readable, as shown below.
This time two homemade switches were needed, again constructed using a paperclip, some tinfoil and a small rubber band, as seen in Part V.
The Commodore 64 BASIC program belonging to this project has a “Teach Moves” mode and a “Repeat Moves” mode. While in Teach Mode the keys 1 and Q make the arm turn and keys 2 and W make it go up and down. At the end of each move press key S to save that particular move.
Below are some videos of the working arm. We start with an overview and end with some LEGO brick lifting.