an epic journey to the puma 560 robotic arm

Finnish automation engineering students from Aalto university explore the internals of an old industrial robotic arm and a related control rack. Best 12 hour Friday night hackathon ever. starring: Eipou, tkln, Mylvari, LehdaRi, sooda (me) this is collected from several shots, start times listed here: 0:00 initial exploration of the control rack 2:59 some pinouts deciphered, running the motors manually 5:36 soldering a button panel for easier controlling and trying it out 11:15 mylvari noticed that he didn't actually record video, just pics, so we lost some footage 11:19 writing down potentiometer pinouts from the arm and reverse-engineering the motor drive modules 12:14 preparing for arduino control, drive module reversing continues 13:09 wiring a RC car motor controller to one joint, featuring arduino and potentiometer for setting motor speed manually (18:10 scaring the shit out of Eipou, lol) 22:17 coding some arduino shit for a P controller 22:43 rudimentary P controller controlling the position of a single joint, feedback comes from a pot inside from the arm