Rotating bones

EDIT

My mechanical spider is not as simple as the pistons of the tutorial, the legs have different angles of rotation in relation to each other, when I put the armature and I can move the individual meshes in pose mode but I have to move the view so is completely perpendicular to the armature I want to rotate in order to avoid weird rotations.
My question now is if there is a way to make the lock the bones in the armature to just let them rotate in only one way from any view. Thanks.

They are plain cylinders and the ‘empty’ is indeed the ‘axes’ of the cylinder itself. You turn them on in Object Context (F7) ‘Draw’ Panel, ‘Axis’ Toggle.

Stefano