Servo Claw Game Puts Your Muscles To The Test

November 5, 2023 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

As fun as claw games are, the jaws are always disappointingly weak, and you usually end up with bupkis. What if the jaws were completely within your control? That’s the idea behind [Upside Down Labs]’ muscle-controlled servo claw game.

While electromyography (EMG) is great for identifying neuro-muscular abnormalities and allows for amazing prosthetic limbs to work, it can also be used for fun. As you’ll see in the video after the break, accurate block-stacking (and possible candy-grabbing) depends on teamwork and tensed muscles.

Though the user provides the muscle, the brains behind this operation is an Arduino Uno with a Muscle BioAmp shield stacked on top, which [Upside Down Labs] also created. This shield makes it ridiculously easy to connect EMG sensors and other I²C devices like screens and, well, servo claws. From there, it’s really just a matter of printing the claw, connecting it to a 9g servo, and using an accompanying kit to prepare the skin and connect the muscles to the Arduino. Be sure to check it out in tense block-stacking action after the break.

If you want to listen in on your muscles, look no further than the BioAmp EMG Pill.

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Oh No! It’s The Claw Again!

June 12, 2017 by Al Williams 7 Comments

[Ryan Bates] apparently really likes building claw machines. We noticed his latest build with a new PCB, but then we scrolled down and found other incarnations of the machine going back to 2015.

The laser-cut claw is interesting looking and the brains are an Arduino. You can see the action in the video below and there are plenty of older videos on the project page.

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Oh No! It’s The Claw!

April 8, 2016 by Al Williams 7 Comments

What’s more seductive than a claw machine? After all, how hard can it be to snag that $2 teddy bear that is practically poking out of the pile of merchandise? But after 20 quarters, you realize you’ve spent $5, and you still don’t have anything to show for it.

[CreativeGuy88] decided to build his own claw machine (that way, he gets to keep the quarters). This sizable build is as much woodworking project as anything. However, the motors and control joysticks require electrical wiring and [CreativeGuy88] used Lego bricks to make much of the carriage.

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Full Size Custom Claw Machine Built With Parts On Hand

September 14, 2015 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

You know how it goes – sometimes you look at your social calendar and realize that you need to throw together a quick claw machine. Such was the dilemma that [Bob Johnson] found himself in during the run-up to the Nashville Mini Maker Faire, and he came up with a nice design that looks like fun for the faire-goers.

Seeking to both entertain and enlighten the crowd while providing them with sweet, sweet candy, [Bob] was able to quickly knock together a claw machine using mainly parts he had on hand in the shop. The cabinet is nicely designed for game play and to show off the gantry mechanism, which uses aluminum angle profiles and skate bearings as custom linear slides. Plenty of 3D printed parts found their way into the build, from pillow blocks and brackets for the stepper motors to the servo-driven claw mechanism. A nice control panel and some color-coded LED lighting adds some zip to the look, and a Teensy LC runs the whole thing.

Like [Bob]’s game, claw machines that make it to Hackaday seem to be special occasion builds, like this claw machine built for a kid’s birthday party. Occasion or not, though, we think that fun builds like these bring the party with them.

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Hackaday Links: Sunday, July 14th, 2013

July 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Wanting to repair his much-used NES controllers [Michael Moffitt] sourced a replacement for the rubber button pads. They didn’t work all that well but he fixed that by using angle clippers on the part that contacts the PCB traces.

Here’s a neat Claw Game project show-and-tell video. [Thanks David]

We already know that [Bunnie] is building a laptop. Here’s an update on the project.

Hackaday alum [Caleb Kraft] continues his helpful hacking by adding an alternative to clicking an Xbox 360 stick.

[Blackbird] added a camera to the entry door of his house. He didn’t want to forget to shut it off (wasting power) so he built an automatic shutoff.

We’re not really sure what this computational photography project is all about. It takes pictures with the subject illuminated in different colors then combines individual color channels with a MATLAB script.

Finally, [Dave Jones] tears down a Nintendo 64 console on a recent EEVblog episode.