Affordable robotic arm controller - Wio Terminal (D51R) - Lin Daring - CodeCraft Hub
Scene: Education. Edge AI application on CodeCraft Hub for Education use cases.
Devices / BOM: Wio Terminal (D51R), SO-ARM101
Education application on CodeCraft Hub. Turn your Wio Terminal into an affordable robotic arm controller with one-click deployment.
Documentation
Traditional robot teach pendants are powerful but often expensive, brand-specific, and designed for industrial robot cells. This application turns the low-cost Wio Terminal into a lightweight handheld controller for SoArm, giving makers, students, researchers, and robotics developers an affordable way to control a real robotic arm, view joint and connection status, switch step modes, and start teleoperation without building a custom desktop UI.
Typical Scenarios
Robotics education and workshops : show how joystick inputs, serial messages, joint selection, and emergency stop map to real robot motion.
LeRobot teleoperation preparation : manually explore robot motion before recording demonstrations or training imitation learning policies.
Desktop manipulation prototyping : quickly test pointing, grasping, simple sorting, object pushing, and other tabletop robot tasks.
Deploy steps
- Flash Wio Terminal Firmware
Connect your Wio Terminal to your computer via a USB cable and clice Flash Firmware button
Note: To flash the firmware, you need to open this application using the Chrome or Safari browser.
Flash firmware to your device (in-app tool on CodeCraft Hub).
- Mount And Connect SoArm
Please install the robotic arm according to the example diagram:
1 Secure the robotic arm to a stable desk using the mounting brackets on the left and right sides.
2 Insert the USB-C cable into the robotic arm's slot and connect the arm to the computer via the USB cable.
3 Connect the robotic arm to the power supply.
- Connect Serial Ports
1 Visit the SenseCraft Demo site and select "Wio Terminal Hub."
2 Connect the Wio Terminal to your computer via a serial connection.
3 Connect the robotic arm to your computer via a serial connection.
Note: If the connection to the robotic arm fails, disconnect the power and try again.
- Start Teleoperation
1 Press the C button to refresh and synchronize the robotic arm.
2 Press the A button to select the joint you wish to control.
3 Press the ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ buttons to move the joint.