Robotic Arm for Arduino Coding Programming 6DOF Hiwonder-xArm1S STEM Educational Building Robot Arm Kits, 6 AXIS Full Metal Robotic Arm Wireless Controller/PC/App/Mouse Control Learning Robot

Let me preface with... I've been a tinker'er, gadget geek, etc my entire life. Played with some toy robot stuff a few years back, before the whole maker, STEM, 3d printing, arduino, rasp pi, etc craze and this stuff became affordable.A mid life career change and the quest to always be learning new stuff led me to order this xArm.This review will be just some notes from my build that may help others.-Items are packaged well-out of the entire kit, only found 1 bad item (so far anyway), one of the acorn nuts for the suction cups wasn't threaded, minor issue, found another nut in my junk box.-when you start you build, take the bag of screws and sort them all by size into piles-I had the lewansoul website pulled up on my monitor with the large photo of xArm during my build for reference-watch the youtube build video in it's entirety before starting your build, just to get an idea of what you'll be doing, then build as you watch and pause the next round. The video is VERY good.-watch the wiring video before you start also!! and note where the short and long cables go. I would recommend plugging the proper cables into the servos as your are building, if you wait till it's all assembled it can be tough to get the connectors in-all the arm servos basically end up installed the same direction, the output shaft will be on the same, and the cable connectors will on be on the other side-when you get to the round aluminum cylinders and adding the brackets, the larger cylinder goes closer to the base of the unit, you can kinda see this when looking at the large web photos-as someone mentioned the servos are numbers 1 through 6 from the gripper towards the base-the servos come out of the box all centered, so don't turn the shafts at all, until they are mounted square to the brackets-there was no directions on how or where to install the control board, but's is pretty self explanatory by looking at the photos and parts you have left at that point, just use the screws that are left, and the plastic standoffs-I was unable to connect to the xArm with my bluetooth phone at first, I tried a different tablet and it worked ok, so I uninstalled the app, and reinstalled on my phone, then it worked fine. This may have something to do with permissions, as I denied permission to 'phone location' at first, and allowed it the second install. Hey Lewansoul, why do you need permission to my location with this app???-Check your servo wiring when complete and make sure the routing doesn't bind up, or get pinched at the servo travel limits, use the included plastic clips to help as/where needed.-I cut some black foam weather stripping and installed it on my gripper to help it hold small plastic partsYou don't need anything else to operate this arm, everything needed for basic operation is included in the box. You can manually move the arm, and program in an 'action' with just the 2 buttons on the control board. If you use the PC software to do the same thing, then you can go back and tweak your 'action' to make it more accurate.I'm looking forward to digging into the add on kit, and get an arduino hooked up to start working on my own code.Yes you can buy an arm kit for cheaper, but the fact that everything is included here in one box to get going, it has the serial servos with feedback, and I love the blue anodizing. I haven't found anything to deduct from it's 5 star status.For now, great job Lewansoul... I'll try to remember to update my review after I have more time with this, and dig into the add on kit.

It's a birthday present for a 10-year-old boy. I think it would work well as a present for all the way up to 15-year-olds. He's very good with building other things (graduated from Legos), so he's experienced. The assembly instructions were in video format, not something he's used to. But it's workable and complete. He probably could not have finished it all by himself. Needed adult supervision and perhaps sometimes a little helping hand, but not much more than that. We had to play and pause the video many times to get through it. Once assembled, we tested it using the (included) PS2-style remote controller. He was excited to say the least when it worked. Controlling it can be done in one of 3 ways: the remote controller via bluetooth, using tablet (ios/anroid app) via bluetooth, or a Windows PC over USB. When we got the first program to work, it was super ecstatic high-five time.Overall, it was a very educational experience. Well worth the money and time. If your kids have any interest in STEM or robotics, then this is a must. That said, it's not perfect. Here are the issues that we've encountered. 1) The assembly instructions were not clear about the placement of the base bearing subassembly (including the bottom servo, bearings and the associated pieces). It's tricky to get it right because the available turning arc of the servo may or may not match the turning limiters of the metal plates. It's trial-and-error. We had to partially disassemble it a couple times to get it right. That's the reason for the 1 star being deducted in the easy-to-assemble category. 2) That bottom servo had failed one time. However, I'd like to point out that the seller's level of support was excellent. They were able to properly diagnose the issue and send out a replacement unit quickly. While I took 1 star off for sturdiness because of this, I still gave it 5 stars for the overall experience with no reservation. 3) this is not so much a complain but a wishlist -- the tablet app and the PC software are very different. They do different things. Also, the PC app was triggering all kinds of malware warnings from Windows. Need to get that stuff signed better.