Charlie S.

the prosthetic finger is now muscle controlled using EMG sensors. the sensors go on your forearm and back your hand. to get best results find where your forearm flexes the most and put two on one closer to the wrist and one three inches behind it. connect those two to the red wires. the black wire or the negative wire goes on the back your hand in the center. these were hooked up to an Arduino Uno with a backyard brains attachment for muscle control. I used code from backyard brains for a muscle controlled claw and slightly edited it to fit the finger. the finger right now is glued to the model along with the servo motor. I'm going to figure out soon how to mount it to an actual hand and have it be removable. to power the servo and Arduino and sensors you need two 9 volt batteries, one plugged in to the Arduino and one plugged into the add-on. something you can do to help with the sensitivity of the sensors is wrap the wires in electrical tape. insulating the wires will not let the electricity from your fingers affect the finger when you grab the wires. To change the sensitivity and twitchiness of Servo motor I messed around with two different things in the code. the first thing Was the update time and the second was the minimal step. if the update time was too long the finger wouldn't be practical and there would be a long delay. if it was too short the finger would be updating constantly and in some situations it would read your heartbeat and move to that. the minimal step was the minimal degrees it would turn. in other words it would update every that many degrees. A high minimal step would make the motor slow and only go to the up or down positions. But a low minimal step would not let the finger move down for some reason. I am still trying to figure out why. Trying to find a way where I can have the finger in a position that is not just up or down and be able to hold it in the middle. to do that I'm messing around with the sensitivity in the code stated before.

3D print for the finger was developed by a man named Nick who has a website called Nick’s Prosthetic Finger.  the finger he developed  required the user to have one digit of their finger left and a string or piece of fishing line would go around a bracelet and when the user moved their nug it would potential on the string moving the rest of the finger. his latest version is 3.5 but he is coming out with version 4 soon. I use this concept but instead of being based on the movement by your other finger it would be based on the movement of the server motor that would contract the finger. this is a good alternative because many people that lose their fingers lose an entire finger not just one or two digits. the best and mostly prosthetic thing or Electronics. For example all of Naked Prosthetics’ fingers in addition to Nick's 3D printed prosthetic finger. the best fingers are made by Naked Prosthetics in my opinion, but I know they're expensive because instead of playing a price says get a quote. in an Ideal World There would be an option for people that lost their entire finger that was non electronic but right now that doesn't exist. with the most control fingers I hope to have a good alternative for finger amputees that won't break the bank, be comfortable, or be too bulky.I'm looking to see if there are any that I can work with because many of them have different opinions on Prosthetics. some see it as I still have four other working fingers so I don't need it. these people are often older because they do not have access to good Prosthetics when they were first amputated. many newer amputees are looking for a prosthetic to replace the finger they recently lost. in my opinion one of the best things a finger amputee can do is get a prosthetic early so they can be retrained with it, especially if they are a kid.