Stringman

Stringman is an open-source room-scale cable-suspended crane robot by Neufangled Robotics. Multiple anchor units mount on walls or ceiling and each reel a cable under computer control to suspend and precisely position a gripper anywhere in 3D space — like a miniature industrial cable robot for your home.

The system uses computer vision (apriltags + calibrated cameras on each anchor) and a Kalman-filter position estimator to achieve millimeter-level positioning without encoders on the gantry itself. An optional ML model (PyTorch, runs on NPU or GPU) enables autonomous object detection and pick-and-place sequences.

Key specs:

• Architecture: parallel cable robot (4 anchors + 1 gripper unit)
• Anchors: MKS42C stepper motors or DM-H6215 BLDC, Raspberry Pi Zero 2W per anchor
• Gripper: servo-actuated (InventorHATMini), BNO085 IMU, VL53L1X laser rangefinder
• Host controller: PC/laptop — min 8 cores, 8 GB RAM, PyTorch acceleration required
• Control protocol: WebSocket + Protobuf over mDNS-discovered LAN connections
• Firmware: Python (nf_robot package), Apache 2.0
• Hardware designs: CERN-OHL-W 2.0

Attribution: Built by Nathan Fong / Neufangled Robotics.

Source: https://github.com/nhnifong/cranebot3-firmware

Hardware CAD: https://neufangled.com/docs/downloads/

Docs & build guides: https://neufangled.com/docs

Store: https://neufangled.com/store

License notice: STL files and hardware designs are released under the CERN Open Hardware Licence Weakly Reciprocal v2 (CERN-OHL-W 2.0). The CERN-OHL-W 2.0 is a weakly reciprocal open hardware licence: you may manufacture, study, modify, and distribute these designs and products based on them. If you manufacture products based on these designs and make modifications to the hardware, you must make those modifications available under the CERN-OHL-W 2.0. Firmware is separately licensed under Apache 2.0.