Duh-Vinci Surgical Robot

Below is the Multi-Million Dollar Ultra-High Technology Da Vinci Surgical Robot.

And this is the Cheap Low Technology Duh Vinci Surgical Robot.

There comes a time when medical advancements fall into the consumer market of things. The Duh-Vinci is that moment when medical technology meets the dollar store.

Creation Requirements

Parts List:

4 x Me Arm Open Source Robot

1 x Dissection Kit

1 x SparkFun Blynk Board

1 x 4 Line Voltage Level Shifter

1 x ESP32-Cam w/ OV2640 camera

1 x PCA9685 12-bit 16-PWM Servo Controller Board

4 x Cat6 RJ45 Surface Mount Box - 1 Port

2 x Cat6 RJ45 Surface Mount Box - 2 Port

4 x Cat5e Cables (3ft.)

1 x 5v/3.3V DC Power Supply

1 x 6v DC Power Supply (Servos)

Support Device:

1 x Android Tablet

Build Item List:

ESP32-CAM programming rig/FTDI

Software Tools:

Arduino IDE

Blynk App for Android tablet

Overall System Layout

Sub Systems

meArm

meArm Website

The robotic arms are meArm V0.3 possible V0.4 types. They were made several years ago and have been awaiting this opportunity to be of use to mankind.

This is one of four identical meArms. They differ in color to assist in identifying which arm is being used.

Blue elements at base of arm are used to smooth rotation. This design had a gap between the stationary and rotating elements of the base.

The arms in this project use Tower Pro MG-90S Micro Servos. The servos are wired into the RJ-45 housing at the base of each arm.

Socket Wiring

Servo	Wire Color	Servo Position	RJ-45 Socket Layout
Base	Brown	1	Right 2
Right	Grey	2	Right 1
Left	Purple	3	Right 4
Claw	White	4	Left 3
Power +	Red	all	Left 2
Power -	Black	all	Left 1

Local Control System

The Control System can be visualized as below.

The controller displayed as a Fritzing Example.

Note: Camera power supply is now separate because of current draw requirement.

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meArm Cabling

meArms are connected to the controller via RJ-45 Cat5e cables. Cables are color matched to their associated arms.

Remote Control System

The remote control system consists of an android tablet running the Blynk App.

Blynk

Video System

Video for the system is provided by an ESP32-CAM with OV2640 camera. A generic ESP32-Cam from amazon was purchased. The device was found to be compatible with the AI Thinker variety of ESP32-Cams.

Software

meArm Control Software

Basic software for controlling the meArms is from the GitHub Repository:

York Hackspace meArm GitHub Repository

Software was modified to allow control of multiple arms. The modification is primarily assignment of arrays for variable to select which arm is being manipulated.

ESP32-Cam Software

A video stream compatible with Blynk's video-stream widget was necessary. A RTSP stream would work with Blynk. An ESP32-CAM compatible GitHub library was found.

Geeksville Micro-RTSP GitHub Repository

The application used is under Examples: ESP32-devcam.ino

Modifications for the selection of correct camera type (esp32cam aithinker) were needed in the setup() function.

 
void setup()
{
  #ifdef ENABLE_OLED
    hasDisplay = display.init();
    if(hasDisplay) {
        display.flipScreenVertically();
        display.setFont(ArialMT_Plain_16);
        display.setTextAlignment(TEXT_ALIGN_CENTER);
    }
  #endif
    lcdMessage("booting");

    Serial.begin(115200);
    while (!Serial)
    {
        ;
    }


//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// DUH-VINCI MODIFICATION
// SELECTION OF AITINKER CAMERA MODULE TYPE "esp32cam_aithinker_config"


    cam.init(esp32cam_aithinker_config);
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


    IPAddress ip;


#ifdef SOFTAP_MODE
    const char *hostname = "devcam";
    // WiFi.hostname(hostname); // FIXME - find out why undefined
    lcdMessage("starting softAP");
    WiFi.mode(WIFI_AP);
    WiFi.softAPConfig(apIP, apIP, IPAddress(255, 255, 255, 0));
    bool result = WiFi.softAP(hostname, "12345678", 1, 0);
    if (!result)
    {
        Serial.println("AP Config failed.");
        return;
    }
    else
    {
        Serial.println("AP Config Success.");
        Serial.print("AP MAC: ");
        Serial.println(WiFi.softAPmacAddress());

        ip = WiFi.softAPIP();
    }
#else
    lcdMessage(String("join ") + ssid);
    WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
    WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
    while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED)
    {
        delay(500);
        Serial.print(F("."));
    }
    ip = WiFi.localIP();
    Serial.println(F("WiFi connected"));
    Serial.println("");
    Serial.println(ip);
#endif

    lcdMessage(ip.toString());

#ifdef ENABLE_WEBSERVER
    server.on("/", HTTP_GET, handle_jpg_stream);
    server.on("/jpg", HTTP_GET, handle_jpg);
    server.onNotFound(handleNotFound);
    server.begin();
#endif

#ifdef ENABLE_RTSPSERVER
    rtspServer.begin();
#endif
}

Another modification was made in OV2640.cpp. The modification reduces the video stream to QVGA size (320x240) in the camera_config_t esp32cam_aithinker_config structure variable values.

camera_config_t esp32cam_aithinker_config{

    .pin_pwdn = 32,
    .pin_reset = -1,

    .pin_xclk = 0,

    .pin_sscb_sda = 26,
    .pin_sscb_scl = 27,

    // Note: LED GPIO is apparently 4 not sure where that goes
    // per https://github.com/donny681/ESP32_CAMERA_QR/blob/e4ef44549876457cd841f33a0892c82a71f35358/main/led.c
    .pin_d7 = 35,
    .pin_d6 = 34,
    .pin_d5 = 39,
    .pin_d4 = 36,
    .pin_d3 = 21,
    .pin_d2 = 19,
    .pin_d1 = 18,
    .pin_d0 = 5,
    .pin_vsync = 25,
    .pin_href = 23,
    .pin_pclk = 22,
    .xclk_freq_hz = 20000000,
    .ledc_timer = LEDC_TIMER_1,
    .ledc_channel = LEDC_CHANNEL_1,
    .pixel_format = PIXFORMAT_JPEG,
    // .frame_size = FRAMESIZE_UXGA, // needs 234K of framebuffer space
    // .frame_size = FRAMESIZE_SXGA, // needs 160K for framebuffer
    // .frame_size = FRAMESIZE_XGA, // needs 96K or even smaller FRAMESIZE_SVGA - can work if using only 1 fb

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// DUH-VINCI MODIFICATION RIGHT HERE 
// MODIFIED OUTPUT FRAME SIZE TO QVGA

    .frame_size = FRAMESIZE_QVGA,
//
//
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


    .jpeg_quality = 12, //0-63 lower numbers are higher quality
    .fb_count = 2       // if more than one i2s runs in continous mode.  Use only with jpeg
    
};

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Blynk Application Widgets

Video Stream

The video stream is supplied by the ESP32-Cam. It is configured as a RTSP stream.

The video-stream widget is configured as :

URL Address: rtsp://192.168.1.19:8554/mjpeg/1

Output : V7

You will replace "192.168.1.19" with the IP address generated from the ESP32-devcam application. The IP address is displayed via the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE. This IP address will change as you change the WiFi network you connect.

Arm Selection

A Styled_Button-widger is used to traverse the list of meArms (total of four).

Four LED-widgets are used to display which meArm is active. A LED-widget for each arm is "turned on" representing that arms color. Only one arm is active at anytime. The arms are labeled: SCAPEL, PROBE, TWEEZERS and CAMERA.

Arm Control

Two Joystick widgets are used to control an arm. The left Joystick widget controls the X-Y position of the claw. The right Joystick widget controls the Z position and the Open/Close claw function.

CAD Render

MeArm - 3D

meArm CAD model from GrabCAD with following attributes:

meArm

Nemanja Petkov

December 21st, 2014

MeArm - Pocket Sized Industrial Robotics for Everybody

by Benjamin Gray

Model was modified for this rendering to match the V0.3 variety I have.

PCA9685 Module - 3D

Module from GrabCAD with following attributes:

16 channel PCA9685

Ali ZAHI

September 22nd, 2016

16-Channel 12-bit PWM/Servo Driver - I2C interface - PCA9685

Model was modified for this rendering to match the variety of PCA9685 Module I have.

ESP32-Cam - 3D

Module from GrabCAD with following attributes:

ESP32-CAM

Jan Jezek

May 6th, 2019

ESP32-S module with camera Geekcreit diymore.cc. iges, step, stp

Model was modified for this rendering to match the variety of ESP32-Cam I have.

Sparkfun Blynk Board

Module from SparkFun website. Converted from Blender file for this rendering.

System Schemes

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