← Darsh Patel

OR lighting arm

TAMUhack · Hackathon · team of four

An operating-room lighting arm built at TAMUhack 2026 with Apoorv Agrawal, Sean Aiuvalasit and Molly Gray. It's a 2-DoF SCARA arm, run by an ESP32, that follows a hand using computer vision.

I designed the whole arm assembly in Onshape, with tolerances set for quick printing. I also built the power distribution: a 24 V input split into 3.3, 5, 6.8 and 12 V rails feeding three DM556 stepper drivers. And I wrote a C++ step-pulse library to drive the steppers smoothly.

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The built SCARA arm with its stepper drivers and power distribution wired up in the box behind it.
The built SCARA arm with its stepper drivers and power distribution wired up in the box behind it.
Running at TAMUhack, with the camera feed for hand tracking on the laptop.
Running at TAMUhack, with the camera feed for hand tracking on the laptop.
The arm assembly in Onshape: two links on a printed base that holds the steppers.
The arm assembly in Onshape: two links on a printed base that holds the steppers.