I'm new to arduino and would like to start off a project using a robotic arm that carries objects and move around. I can read through the tutorials to develop the sketch but not sure which arduino board I require. Can someone help ?
The arm that I plan to purchase is
This arm already has an "Arduino board" built in to the controller. Theoretically, you can just plug it into your computer, write an Arduino sketch, and upload it to the controller board.
Unfortunately, after quite some time looking, I have not found any documentation from the manufacturer on how to do any of that. They provide you with a couple of proprietary applications that allow you to do visual programming of the arm. They claim that it works with Arduino, but then don't give even the slightest bit of documentation on how you can do that. The best you get is in the specs: "Microprocessor: Arduino Uno". That doesn't make much sense because the Arduino Uno is not a microprocessor. The Arduino Uno is a development board which has an ATmega328P microcontroller on it. The product description also claims "uses ARM core CPU", but the ATmega328P is not an ARM core CPU. I suppose I could give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are talking about the microcontroller on the Bluetooth module, but the fact that they call the Uno a "microprocessor" in the specs makes me think they just don't have a clue what they are talking about.
So this looks to me to be a fun toy if you just want to do some limited point and click stuff in a proprietary application of unknown quality. But if you want to do real programming of the arm via Arduino or any other "real" interface, I think you will have to expect to proceed without any hope of help from the manufacturer. I see that a member of the Arduino community has published some information here:
and on the linked Facebook page, but, despite appearing promising at first, when you look further it seems like they spent a couple weeks messing with the arm, and then left it without really getting to far.
So for someone "new to arduino", I would say this is probably not the right arm to buy. It's really a shame that the manufacturer didn't spend a little bit of time to provide support for this usage of their product. I'm sure that investment would have paid off many times over.
You might just start with one of the ebay servo based "claw" or "pick and place" servo based robotic arms. Servos are easily controlled by an arduino board. You can develop your own control setup. The referenced arm is lacking in details of how their arm works.