Would like to know your reasoning on not going with LeRobot.
Re why not SO-101: the article has a footnote about this; I actually bought the SO-101 as well! I want to integrate it into the same setup so I can switch depending on task.
Somewhat surprisingly the xarm was actually much faster to arrive; I got it within 2 days of ordering. I don’t have a 3D printer and getting the SO-101 from the vendor I ordered it at took almost 4 weeks. So partially it just came down to what I had access to more quickly.
Second point is reliability: I think the SO-101 is cool but I’d be surprised if it doesn’t break more quickly than the xarm. I wanted something that’s going to last a long time without headaches. And these industrial arms are really mature hardware wise now.
Hope this helps!
Will email you to compare notes.
How have you found it?
(The author does explain his reasons for not using LeRobot in the post - although "I also use LeRobot for training and running baseline policies, and the vendor SDKs for the hardware.")
Ah! That is exactly what I use it for as well :-)
I am liking the SO101 - teleop and robot both work great. For sure, it is very easy to get started with. I was able to collect around 50 demos with them and train my first ACT policy within days of setting up the robots. Happy to share more detailed learnings from this if/when you get started with it. https://github.com/avilay/learn-robotics