Planet Arduino

It isn’t uncommon to see a robot hand-controlled with a glove to mimic a user’s motion. [All Parts Combined] has a different method. Using a Leap Motion controller, he can record hand motions with no glove and then play them back to the robot hand at will. You can see the project in the video, below.

The project seems straightforward enough, but apparently, the Leap documentation isn’t the best. Since he worked it out, though, you might find the code useful.

An 8266 runs everything, although you could probably get by with less. The Leap provides more data than the hand has servos, so there was a bit of algorithm development.

We picked up a few tips about building flexible fingers using heated vinyl tubing. Never know when that’s going to come in handy — no pun intended. The cardboard construction isn’t going to be pretty, but a glove cover works well. You could probably 3D print something, too.

The Unity app will drive the hand live or can playback one of the five recorded routines. You can see how the record and playback work on the video.

This reminded us of another robot hand project, this one 3D printed. We’ve seen more traditional robot arms moving with a Leap before, too.

It isn’t uncommon to see a robot hand-controlled with a glove to mimic a user’s motion. [All Parts Combined] has a different method. Using a Leap Motion controller, he can record hand motions with no glove and then play them back to the robot hand at will. You can see the project in the video, below.

The project seems straightforward enough, but apparently, the Leap documentation isn’t the best. Since he worked it out, though, you might find the code useful.

An 8266 runs everything, although you could probably get by with less. The Leap provides more data than the hand has servos, so there was a bit of algorithm development.

We picked up a few tips about building flexible fingers using heated vinyl tubing. Never know when that’s going to come in handy — no pun intended. The cardboard construction isn’t going to be pretty, but a glove cover works well. You could probably 3D print something, too.

The Unity app will drive the hand live or can playback one of the five recorded routines. You can see how the record and playback work on the video.

This reminded us of another robot hand project, this one 3D printed. We’ve seen more traditional robot arms moving with a Leap before, too.

To complement his VR experience, Florian Mauer built a controller that could perhaps best be described as a “hand bracelet.”

As virtual reality applications begin to be implemented, one challenge will be finding an interface device, or combination of them that are unobtrusive, yet allow for versatile input. Mauer decided on a design inspired by the gravity control bracelet from the movie “Ender’s Game.” It can be worn similar to how a pistol is held (illustrated here with a virtual pistol), and reportedly doesn’t get in the way when using a keyboard or mouse–at least before the button was added.

The 3D-printed gadget features an IMU, Arduino Pro Micro, as well as a couple buttons for in-game actions. This helps the Leap Motion controller used here to recognize gestures that would be difficult for its camera to pick up otherwise.

In the 2013 adaptation of Ender’s Game, Harrison Ford’s character slips a metallic device over his hand to control gravity in the training room. This scene inspired me as I’ve been trying to imagine VR controllers that can be used alongside mouse+keyboards. The controller used by Ford seemed convenient to put on, offer a lot of finger freedom, and probably allow for throwing VR objects without falling off.

You can see more information on this promising project on Mauer’s website here.

The Leap Motion controller is a rather impressive little sensor bar that is capable of generating a massive 3D point cloud and recognizing hands and fingers to allow for gesture control based computing. It’s been out for a few years now but we haven’t seen many hackers playing with it. [Anwaarullah] has messed around with it before, but when it came time to submit something for India’s first Maker Faire, he decided to try doing an actual project with it.

Checking out the latest Leap Motion SDK, [Anwaarullah] realized many improvements had been made and he’d have to rewrite some of his original code to reflect the changes. This time around he’s opted to use the ESP8266 WiFi module instead of a Bluetooth one. He printed off a Raptor hand (from the wonderful folks at e-NABLE) and hooked it up with some RC servos to give him a nice robotic hand to control.

The actual code being sent to the Arduino is pretty simple. The Leap Motion SDK does all the complex stuff, and in the end, just sends a serial command of how many fingers it sees to the Arduino in order to control the hand.

For more info about the project, you can check out his original foray into Leap Motion Arduino control here. And for more examples of Leap Motion controlled things using Arduinos, why not control a cute animatronic desk lamp?

Filed under: 3d Printer hacks, Arduino Hacks

RobotsConf, a new conference designed to transform coders into makers, was a huge success! I spoke with conference curators Chris and Laura Williams before the event. They had an audacious plan, and I wondered if it would work. I've attended many tech conferences and maker events, but never one with this format - a format which was later referred to as "sleep-away maker camp" by an attendee.

Read more on MAKE

The Leap Motion is a very cool device, but so far we haven’t seen many applications of interacting with physical devices. [Xavier] wanted to control a cute servo animated desk lamp with his hands, and with the help of a Leap and an Arduino he was able to do just that.

The Leap Motion API has a handy feature that will output all its data over a websocket. It’s a very easy way to transfer hand positions with a minimum amount of overhead, and with just a little bit of Node.js, it’s only two lines of code to connect the Leap to a websocket server.

With the Leap data on a web server, the only thing left to do is pulling it down to an Arduino. Again, [Xavier] used Node.js, this time in the form of johnny five, a Javascript-based Arduino framework. After that, it was a simple matter of mapping the data from the Leap to servo movements in [Xavier]‘s Pixar-inspired lamp.

Video of the build below.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, hardware