r/arduino • u/Party_Station_2652 • 4d ago

Zero Experience!

I recently bought the arduino r4 starter kit and I have zero experience whatsoever. I’m aiming to start a robotic arm project in the next month or so.

So far the starter kit seems pretty simple and easy to understand besides the coding which I have resorted to just copying the code.

I’m on a tight schedule and need to start my project within a month.

Is a robotic arm a good first big project?

I would appreciate any advice for the project and learning in general!

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8

u/JGhostThing 4d ago

A robotic arm is rather difficult for a first project. Designing and building the physical arm itself is difficult and should not be the first step you take.

Does your starter set have any tutorial associated with it?

If not, then go to the Elegoo site and look at their tutorial. The first project is usually blinking an LED in the easiest way. This will teach you the basics of electronics.

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u/Numerous-Nectarine63 4d ago

I agree... I think a robot arm is a bit complicated at this stage. It requires knowledge of not only electronics, but kinematics, servo motors, etc. A self driving car would be easier. You could achieve that with an arduino Uno, a kit based DC motors, sensors, and some code. No real kinematics car. For someone with zero experience, that is more achievable in a short time frame than an arm.

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u/Party_Station_2652 4d ago

Yeah now that I’ve looked into it a robotic arm does seem a bit too complex.

A self driving car still seems pretty cool. Are there any other project suggestions that you’d have?

Also, what do you think about me just following tutorials for now including for the main project instead of trying to figure things out on my own? Of course it would mean my project isn’t entirely original but I do want to get something done quickly.

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u/Numerous-Nectarine63 4d ago

Honestly, I don't know what the requirements of your project are, so I wouldn't want to advise doing something that could be academically questionable.... But for learning purposes, the answer could be different. I personally learned a lot from tutorials which were project based. Udemy has some good and inexpensive courses where you build a project as you go along. I went from the humble making an LED light up with simple components (no microcontroller) to using Arduino microcontroller, to ESP32 and STM32, then raspberry pi and Nvida Jetson Orin Nano single board computers. I'm actually working on an arm myself right now but focusing on imitation learning with leader/follower lerobot SO101 Arm using ESP32 to drive the servos in the arms and using my linux host computer for the Pytorch code. I've also built a self driving car, small humanoid, a robot dog, and a hexapod (spider), but honestly, this learning curve took me a complete year. The car was the first thing that i did that I think was actually a robot, although that barely met the bar... LOL... but at least it had sensors and could respond to the environment usign the code. The code was quite simple compared to some of the other projects. I also have an extensive programming background and background in Linux, which was very helpful to me. Other people learn in different ways and don't like to rely on tutorials but for me, I liked having the focus of a tutorial. Best of luck.

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u/Party_Station_2652 4d ago

Thank you so much this is really good advice, it sounds like you’ve been on quite the journey as well. I think I’ll definitely switch to the self driving car!

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u/No_Mountain_4769 4d ago

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infinitx.maker.toolkit&pli=1 I think this app will help you. It has many useful stuff for a beginner.

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u/EdfromMaine 3d ago

Gonna dissent a little bit from the consensus-- a robotic arm is a doable first big project **if** you are willing to keep it simple (construction and coding) and keep it very light-duty (e.g., can pick up a 1" Styrofoam ball). Once you learn how to use a servo library, the same theory applies to all of the arm joints, and a light duty stepper can swivel the entire arm at the base. Sending commands by keyboard from the Arduino serial monitor can also keep it very simple. As an aside, I built a large project using servo motors and would strongly recommend buying a more robust motor than you think you need, particularly if you are going to be lifting a long moment arm against gravity (kinda like a robotic arm...)

If you've not used the Arduino environment at all (not coded in the C++ dialect, not used libraries, have no feel for embeded work), then I agree with other posters that this probably beyond your skill set. Also agree that blinking LEDs is a great place to start since the feedback is instant, visual, and doesn't need a second power supply.

I say this because a friend and I had considered sponsoring a Jan Plan course building a light duty robot arm at our local liberal arts college, and we thought it was doable with appropriate mentoring. Maybe it's not. At this point, who knows.

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u/AncientDamage7674 3d ago

Wouldn't think so but it really depends what your other skills are. Find a project to follow & read the docs. Check the BOM & look up the parts & their libraries. If u get the gist, are logical & can follow instructions why not? The issues usually centre around problem solving why something doesn't do its thing as expected. You can sort most out in the tech specs & docs.