My personal goal with DisClaw is to gather a community of like-minded claw machine enthusiasts! I have always been semi-obsessed with them and currently own two. Bringing it to Discord has been a passion project ever since I got my first claw machine back in August 2019, and I finally came up with a way to do it after learning some Python in 2022. That began the journey of creating something that could actually be used by a larger group of people. However, the game's main board had burned up, and I had to move across the USA for college in 2023, so development of my bot stopped.
Fast forward to 2024: I started work at an arcade as a technician and improved my skills to the point where I was confident in repairing almost anything, whether it be board repair or gutting and redoing an entire machine. Later, in 2025, I got a deal I could not pass up: $150 for a full-size claw machine that could just barely fit in my Honda Element and through my apartment door. It worked great at first; however, two weeks after purchase, it developed an issue that would lead me down a troubleshooting rabbit hole.
The left/right motor was slow to start. I first found issues with the power supply, which I resolved by recapping it. Voltage metering on the motor output looked good, even while running, still slow to start... I checked the resistance of the motor, and it was low… too low. I replaced all the motors, but it was still slow to start. I then moved on to board troubleshooting and traced the issue back to the one thing on the board that could not be replaced, the CPU... It would jitter, pulling up the transistor that controlled the motor and leaving it somewhat floating for a few seconds before latching (among other issues that I should have realized sooner). Sadly, this required me to replace the main board, and I wasn’t fully ready to tackle the project at the moment with everything else going on.
Still, I worked on the bot on the side, added a rough queue, photos, and began thinking about monetization. Long story short, I ended up spending over 200 hours learning some HTML to make a website, plus some basic C++, PHP, and JavaScript for backend transaction handling, many hours troubleshooting and dying, and BOOM... WE GOT MICROTRANSACTIONS!!! Yet still, there was no properly functioning game.
Finally, in January, after moving and completely disassembling and rebuilding the claw machine, it was time to order all the parts I needed to get it working. The parts took a while to arrive, but I installed all-new wiring harnesses, integrated the controller into the game, and set up everything... And it worked! DisClaw, my dream, had finally come to life. (minus the fact that the OG 2022 controller died the second I got it to work :|)
Now is where you come in. The people are the most important part, because without them, I just have a system I’ve poured my soul into sitting unused, collecting dust.
I don’t want this to be my job. I don’t want to scam people out of money. I simply want to share the project that I’ve dreamed of for so long with the world, and the best way I can think to do that is to help support other makers and artists. All I hope to earn for myself from this is enough to cover operational costs and improve my setup. The rest goes to the artists and whatever cause we see fit.
Become A DisClaw Maker!
DM Kyle99 on Discord for details. Anything you have made that you are selling can be placed in the prize directory :)