Robot Hands
Sun May 10 2026 (E: 2026 May 13)
Back at SCaLE 22x, I saw a booth by Thundercomm featuring a robot hand. I thought it looked cool, so I bought a left and a right hand for myself.
These robot hands are uHand UNOs by HiWonder. They don’t have same range of motion as a real hand and wrist. They can grab; however, they won’t be able to hold a pen or use utensils.
Additionally, the hands can come with a remote control glove that operates over Bluetooth. However, I haven’t gotten the glove to work. (Why? I’ll probably find out later.)
A few notes on setting things up that don’t come with the manual, which I’ll forget if I don’t write them down:
Unplug battery when flashing – do not plug in the battery and the USB type B cable at the same time.
If the hand jitters while plugged in, it’s because the cable does not supply enough power for the servos.
For flashing, battery
unplugged.
Application control
mode over USB to UART.
Close up of USB to
UART.
To try programming the hand in Arduino Studio, I made it so it
listens to commands over serial like curl$ and
home$.1 However, because of point #1, I
have to unplug, replug battery and plug in a USB-to-UART cable. So I
don’t forget, connect:
- black to purple (ground)
- grey (MCU_RX) to green (MCU_TX)
- white (MCU_TX) to white (MCU_RX)