Hack a ToyProject Winter 2012

Here is a picture of a claw I have been working on. There is a light at the palm of the claw, however it was sadly burnt out during a test. The claw is simply a claw and its only purpose is to open and close.

In addition to the use of hacking this toy, the main purpose of its use is to be able to synchronize the claw manually and to be used for a "grabber" mechanism for the RoboSub Team. I believe that the motors will eventually need to be upgraded, but for the sake of time and further debugging to perfect the motion of the claw, this will have to be on hold.

My objective for hacking this toy is to attach the claw to the Picaxe 08M2 microcontroller and allow the user to manually control the claw with the use of a single pole single throw button and a 5 volt relay. The ideal motion of the claws command is to remain off until the button is pushed. However, the amount of current the claw requires is causing issuse for the relay to work with the claw at the same time. To resolve this issue, i have used a secondary power supply providing 3 volts of power to the motor directly (with a 4001 Diode). From here, a code has been written so that the claw will open indefinitely and will only oscillate with the relay switch once the button is pressed and held.

A future goal will be to install a more heavy duty motor and allow for a fully stopped motor on the claw and to integrate a "open" and "close" function independently so that the claw will be at the full control of the user.