So I bought this arm from Hiwonder called the xArm. The arm itself is pretty good. Hardware is fine.
Robotic arms come in three general price points. The lowest is ~$40 and below, and they’re cool but garbage. Most of them have some interface and at least two joints + the gripper, but the servos are worthless and the metal is flimsy. Next up there’s a ~$100 to $200 batch of tolerable arms. The xArm is in this group; I think I paid about $200 for it. In this regime, most aspects are fine. There will generally be a few good points and a few drawbacks, but most things will be fine. Then there’s a deep trough of nothing until the $700+ arms. From there things go as expensive as you want.
The Hiwonder xArm is pretty typical for the middle group. The metal is well stamped, the pieces fit without filing or sanding, and the wires plug-in well. Some of the connectors are a little shoddy, and a few minor pieces fell apart. Still, it’s pretty good. I’m going over it with Loctite, and my machine shop made a new stand. That’s probably not something most people have access to, but this is a work piece. Physically, it’s fine or good.
The downside is the software. Everything is locked behind this odd digital mask. I can’t send PWMs to the servos or get position info out without doing this weird, proprietary dance in encoded hex. Hiwonder really wants me to use their software, but their software isn’t that good. I can’t get kHz+ position information at all, they don’t have good scripting or export tools, I can’t use other software or hardware for control, and the entire process is kludgy. They don’t have any useful tools.
If I have to use your protocol, why don’t you make an opensource translator? If you want me to use your software, why can’t I export position data as quickly as it gets written? Why are you limiting things?
One of the senior engineers keep telling me to ditch this thing, but short of jumping up to the >$700 regime, there isn’t much.
What’s weird is that the arm would be much better if it wasn’t hobbled. Hiwonder, you have a good arm. Stop making it worse.