Robot Arm & Controller - Building the DFRobot 5 DOF Robot Arm

Today I’ll be putting together a 5 DOF Robot Arm kit by DF Robot and I will control it using an Arduino

Arm provided by DFRobot - https://www.dfrobot.com
Article with code at https://dbot.ws/5dofarm

If you’ve been with the channel for a while you may remember that I assembled a MeArm a while ago. It was a fun project and the resulting arm was great for simple robotics experiments but it didn’t really have any serious capabilities.

In this video, I’m going to put together a much-improved arm, the 5 DOF Robot Arm by DF Robot.

This arm uses high-quality aluminum parts and heavy-duty servo motors for a rugged assembly that will be excellent for experimenting. Unlike the small MeArm, the DF Robot arm is capable of lifting a reasonable bit of weight and has an effective gripper mechanism.

It’s also going to be a great platform for mounting sensors. In fact, I already mounted an MPU5060 gyroscope and accelerometer on it, getting prepared for a future project!

The only thing lacking with the kit is instructions, essentially there aren’t any. So hopefully this video and the accompanying article will serve as the missing instruction manual.

Here is the Table of Contents for today's video:

00:00 - Introduction
02:57 - Arm Kit Unboxing
08:26 - Power Supply Considerations
09:52 - DOF Explained
11:48 - Beginning Construction
14:42 - Servo Motor Test
17:11 - Arm Assembly
45:03 - Controller Hookup
47:26 - Controller Code
52:02 - Arm Test

The article goes through the assembly in great detail, I suggest you check it out if you are building this arm (or one similar to it). You’ll also find a ZIP file with the code for the controller in the Resources section of the article. Check it out at https://dbot.ws/5dofarm <.