[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"$f2ospguxv0iwr0":3},{"_id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"kind":8,"cards":9,"tags":57,"categories":58,"source":59,"lang":62,"author":63,"audioState":66,"stats":67,"publishedAt":70,"renderer":71},"6abd3bcdca21c797c7ea2590","getting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5","Getting out of the way: my robotics crash course","I don't do robots.","news",[10,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,52],{"headline":6,"body":11,"imageUrl":12,"sourceImageUrl":12},"I don't do robots. I don't do blogs. But here I am blogging on my blog about robotics.","https:\u002F\u002Fthisismypersonalblog.com\u002Fposts\u002F2026-09-25-getting-out-of-the-way\u002Fimg\u002FIMG_9514.jpg",{"headline":14,"body":15,"imageUrl":16,"images":17},"I’m a software guy, I’ve spent 25 years","I’m a software guy, I’ve spent 25 years writing software and the last 9+ months going deep into LLM-driven software development. And in that last 9 months I’ve built more software than the previous 25 years combined. My personal GitLab currently hosts 41 projects, most of which are real products that I use regularly or have built for friends and family. As amazing as my LLM-guided software journey has been, it's all started to feel a bit intangible, especially when I'm speaking to anyone non-technical. The notion that we're living in a different world than a year ago seems to be lost on the majority of people I talk to outside of tech.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F1.webp",{"local":16},{"headline":19,"body":20,"imageUrl":21,"images":22},"The people I've most wanted to convince of","The people I've most wanted to convince of this shift were my kids. We've tried to do a few video game projects but they clearly want to play the games more than they want to build them, so the returns have been mixed. I've wanted to find something they can see, touch and feel, so I bought a robot arm and hoped for the best.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F2.webp",{"local":21},{"headline":24,"body":25,"imageUrl":26,"images":27},"I have limited time to devote to my","I have limited time to devote to my hobbies, so I took a leap and bought a preassembled 3D printed LeRobot SO-101 kit, batteries included ($415 shipped). I added a $50 webcam to give another point of reference to the LLM , in addition to the wrist mount cam that came packaged with the kit. If you personally have the time and the patience, you can build this setup for a lot cheaper. Especially if you print the 3D parts yourself. But I couldn't be arsed to build the robot myself, at least not until I know I can do something useful with it.... We begin by digging through drawers","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F3.webp",{"local":26},{"headline":29,"body":30,"imageUrl":31,"images":32},"I managed to track down an 8 year-old","I managed to track down an 8 year-old Raspberry Pi 3 that's been sitting in a drawer for at least 5 years. I found a micro-usb cable and it powered up fine but I needed to flash the SD card with the latest Raspberry Pi OS, since I was 5 major versions out of date. The first few hours, I used Codex to provision the Pi and turn it into the robotics controller and webcam interface. It downloaded and installed the necessary control software from the LeRobot project and basics like python and other dev tools. I also built a quick web dashboard to observe the camera views and eventually provide a control mechanism to the robot arm.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F4.webp",{"local":31},{"headline":34,"body":35,"imageUrl":36,"images":37},"With Codex(Astra) at the wheel, most of the","With Codex(Astra) at the wheel, most of the foundation was built around starting small and proceeding cautiously. A great deal of time was spent writing software to protect the servos and ensure that any detected overloads would cut torque and power so we wouldn't damage the robot or anything else. We started with really small movements and calibration using printed AprilTags(QR like codes). We also \"AprilTagged\" the servos joints on the robot so the camera could easily identify them.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F5.webp",{"local":36},{"headline":39,"body":40,"imageUrl":41,"images":42},"The first real problem was that the serial","The first real problem was that the serial link dropped, but only while motors were moving. We found a few bugs in the code but we also identified a possible power problem. Our power supply was sufficient to power a single servo at at time but not to power all the servos at once. I purchased a new power supply but until that arrived in the mail we would need to power only a single servo at a time while moving the arm.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F6.webp",{"local":41},{"headline":44,"body":45,"imageUrl":46,"images":47},"At this time, I had spent a lot","At this time, I had spent a lot of time (and tokens) calibrating and building the software to run the rest of the experiments, I eventually used up all of my weekly Codex credits and decided to switch over to Fable 5.1 so I could continue working and not burn tokens at API rates. One thing I really liked about this handoff, from Codex to Claude, is the ability to share your full ChatGPT chat with another person or LLM so they can build their own context from the full chat log and not a summary.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F7.webp",{"local":46},{"headline":44,"body":49,"imageUrl":50,"images":51},"At this time, I had spent a lot of time (and tokens) calibrating and building the software to run the rest of the experiments, I eventually used up all of my weekly Codex credits and decided to switch over to Fable 5.1 so I could continue working and not burn tokens at API rates. One thing I really liked about this handoff, from Codex to Claude, is the ability to share your full ChatGPT chat with another person or LLM so they can build their own context from the full chat log and not a summary. Calibration and Spatial Mapping: a great idea in theory, but not so much in practice","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F8.webp",{"local":50},{"headline":53,"body":54,"imageUrl":55,"images":56},"Now using Fable, and with basic foundations of","Now using Fable, and with basic foundations of motion and spatial awareness in place, I went back to the plan: let the LLM map the space using calibrated runs and use inverse kinematics to calculate the actions and execute the plan. Initially I was asked to put the robot into certain poses and then measure the height of the pinch point and the distance from base. This seemed to be making progress towards calibration but once we attempted to actually execute movements they were way off and it was clear that no feedback from the camera was being used to adjust the robot to the observed locations from the calculated ones.","\u002Fapi\u002Fmedia\u002Fposts\u002Fgetting-out-of-the-way-my-robotics-crash-course-d8a184c5\u002F9.webp",{"local":55},[],[],{"name":60,"url":61},"Hacker News","https:\u002F\u002Fthisismypersonalblog.com\u002Fposts\u002F2026-09-25-getting-out-of-the-way\u002F","en",{"handle":64,"displayName":65},"spots","Spots","queued",{"views":68,"likes":69,"saves":69,"shares":69,"completions":69,"opens":69,"skips":69,"depthSum":69},1,0,"2026-09-30T16:41:49.703Z","local"]