My third milestone is to be able to control my arm through a tablet with MIT App Inventor.

One problem I ran into was sending the commands to the arm. Every time a servo was told to move, the whole arm would start twitching uncontrollably. It took some time until I finally found the root of this problem. The arm needed to receive a message after each command and the programmed MIT App Inventor did not send a command, causing the command to not go through and the arm to twice uncontrollably.

One major thing I learned was how to read code and interpret exactly what each line of code does.

My second milestone was to wire all the servos up to the Arduino and get them to run smoothly. After getting the servos to run, my goal was to connect it to Bluetooth, through a HC-06 Bluetooth module, and be able to control the arm with a tablet.

There are still some problems with my wiring, as it isn’t connecting to the Bluetooth module correctly, that I will resolve in the upcoming week.

Because I did not have the right resistors, I learned how voltage is calculated and how to use the resistors I had to replace the needed resistors.

My next steps are to finish the android app using MIT App Inventor that controls the servos.

My first milestone for this project was to construct the robot arm. After constructing the arm, I used a simple sweep code to test all the servos.

Other than receiving the parts a little later than I expected, I ran into a few problems like an unstable base, servos overheating and a claw that would not move. I tried to solve the problem of a wobbly base by adding bolts to secure it in place, However, adding the bolts only put more pressure on the plexiglass, resulting in the piece breaking. I solved the problem of the servos overheating by adding resistors. At the moment, the claw is still unable to move although all the connecting parts are working fine. This is a problem I will be working to solve in the upcoming week.

Some of the things I learned while constructing the arm was the use for each servo on the robot arm. The servo mounted on the bottom of the robot arm controls the rotation of the am, a pivot 180 degrees around the base. The servo on the right side of the arm controls the height of the arm. The servo on the left side of the arm controls the reach of the arm. The servo mounted on the top of the arm controls the opening and closing of the claw.