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Binder Clip Robot

With our Printabots Maker Robot Kit we decided to make a robot that uses everyday items.

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With our Printabots Maker Robot Kit, we've had customers and makers comment that it's not always easy to get access to a 3D Printer, and Shapeways isn't exactly an inexpensive option.

So we decided to use our kit to make a robot using everyday items.

For this robot, we use:

4 servo motors (Printabots Maker Kit)
3 servo arms (Printabots Maker Kit)
1 servo arm (X Arm) (Printabots Maker Kit)
3-4 rubber bands
2 paper clips (gripper)
2 binder clips (arm connector)
servo controller (Wifinch) (Printabots Maker Kit)

Optional:

Android Device
USB cord

We created a featured Instructable here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Binder-Clip-Robot-Arm/

We're looking at creating more hacker robots using everyday items and our kits.

We'd love to get your feedback and any ideas for our next scrappy bot.
  • 1 × Printabots Maker Kit This is the kit we used to make this robot. The kit comes with 5 servo motors, a battery pack, and the WiFinch WiFi motor controller.
  • 3 × Rubber Bands
  • 2 × Paper Clips
  • 2 × Binder Clips
  • 1 × Android Device

View all 6 components

  • Hacking the WiFinch, after all its just an ESP8266

    roboteurs • 10/18/2016 at 14:06 • 0 comments

    For anyone who has looked closely at the WiFinch you can see that the board is powered by an ESP8266. After the featured article on Hackaday.com I figured it would be good to make sure people knew that they could use this board beyond the Android app. Oddly there arnt actually that many WiFi servo boards out there.

    When we designed this board we wanted to make sure that we where using a platform that the community was familiar with. To be honest I quite often dont by things unless they have the potential to be hacked at. The ESP8266 has some serious peripheral limitations (which for the cost is very understandable). Driving a bunch of servos straight from the ESP isnt at all practical.

    The solution? In this case the solution was to add an IC on the I2C bus to do the clock work of driving the servo motors. Here its a PCA968x. This chip is intended as an LED driver. Most LED drivers have very limited clock adjustment capability. This chip wasn't bad at all and will drive the servos with a good degree of accuracy.

    So if you want to hack at the WiFinch check out this link -> WiFinch Hacking

    The libraries can also be found on git -> GitHub

    There is also a video at this link.

View project log

  • 1
    Step 1

    Copied from Instructables:

    Hello Everyone!

    We're back again with another instruction set - this time it's for a robot made simply out of binder clips, paper clips, and rubber bands.

    The robot has a turning base, 2 arm joints, and a gripper end.

    You can use your own controller and motors for this robot. In this instructable we're using our WiFinch controller. It comes with an app to control the robot over WiFi using an Android device.

    You can get the controller here: http://roboteurs.com/products/wifinch-wifi-servo-c...

    All other parts you may have lying around.

    Servo motors you can get @ http://roboteurs.com/products/mini-metal-gear-serv...

    Or if you want to get the motors and the controller, you can get our maker kit here @ http://roboteurs.com/products/printabots-maker-kit

  • 2
    Step 2

    For this robot, we will be using:

    • 4 servo motors
    • 3 servo arms
    • 1 servo arm (X Arm)
    • 3-4 rubber bands
    • 2 paper clips (gripper)
    • 2 binder clips (arm connector)
    • servo controller (Wifinch)

    Optional

    • Android Device
    • USB cord
  • 3
    Step 3

    First we're going to create our robot base.

    Get one servo motor, attach an X arm onto it, and wrap a second servo onto it with a rubber band (see image).

    This will be your base and first robot arm.

View all 7 instructions

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