Muted demo loop from the projectCredit: @lj_ships on X

Use a folding phone as a controller for an SO-101 gripper

Arm, Medium

Knuckle, shared on X, turns a folding phone's hinge into a gripper controller: fold the phone and a real SO-101 claw closes. Record a grasp, replay it, and export 30 Hz training data.

View build on X ↗Share on X

A fun teleop hack: map a phone sensor to a single joint, record trajectories, and feed them into LeRobot-style datasets. Build your own with a phone web app over Web Serial or Wi-Fi.

Hardware & cost: An SO-101 follower arm and a phone.

Difficulty: Medium.

Agent install prompt (paste into Claude Code, Cursor or Codex): "Build a small web app that reads my phone's orientation sensor and streams it over WebSocket to a Python script that sets my SO-101 gripper position via LeRobot, with recording to CSV at 30 Hz."

Source: @lj_ships on X — https://x.com/lj_ships/status/2104788470627709068 (facts checked against the project README, Oct 2026; prices vary by region).

Quick answers

What do you need to use a folding phone as a controller for an SO-101 gripper?: An SO-101 follower arm and a phone.
How hard is it to use a folding phone as a controller for an SO-101 gripper?: Medium.

Buying the parts new, one SO-101 follower arm came to $131.69 at Oct 30 retail prices. See the SO-101 parts list and cost.