Back in the saddle again, I think...

[JohnStack]

I've been cruising the forum occasionally but haven't posted in a while. In fact, my last post was Sept. 22nd.

All I can say is wow. Nice job veteran posters and 3Ders and SeeMeCNC.

Don't know if anyone might be interested but here's what I've done in the last two months. Most of it doesn't involve 3D printing...

I left off having been 90% complete with an all aluminum base for the Rostock. Since the machine shop I was working with imploded or at least their ability to do my stuff. I'm returning back to my plans starting December 1st and will simply post the design when it's complete. Anyone can have the files. I estimate they'll be done Jan 1.

In the mean time, I went overseas for three weeks (Thailand and Japan). Lots of home-built 3D printers in Japan as well as quite a few (shudder) Makerbots. Being a purist now, I don't think anything can touch the Rostock design. In Tokyo, I went to some businesses advertised on http://tokyohackerspace.org/ and found out what other people look like when they're staring at an alien. Most of the robotics companies in Akihabara (the Tokyo electronics district) have them or are assisting companies with building them. Akihabara is still heaven if you want to source stuff but you have to be willing to get off of street level. There are loads of companies in the upper stories. The rest of the street Akihabara is manga stuff.

I also built a remote weather station from scratch with a touch screen. It uses an Arduino Mega 2560..lol and writes everything to an SD card. Not sure where I'm going with it. Probably IOT something.

Not much else except for two new resto projects: a 1970 914-4 and a 1979 VW Bus.

Back to 3D Printing. Finally. I should be cooking with gas again by mid-next week.

Cheers and congrats to the community and the noobs for pushing the Rostock. It's the best out there - still.

[foshon]

I also built a remote weather station from scratch with a touch screen. It uses an Arduino Mega 2560..lol and writes everything to an SD card. Not sure where I'm going with it. Probably IOT something.



Gonna need a post on this. I love it!!

[Eaglezsoar]

I also built a remote weather station from scratch with a touch screen. It uses an Arduino Mega 2560..lol and writes everything to an SD card. Not sure where I'm going with it. Probably IOT something.



Gonna need a post on this. I love it!!

Hey, that sounds cool, I wouldn't mind reading more about that and how you built it.
Regards!

[JohnStack]

An abbreviated version for now...:

Components:
BMP085 Temp/Barometer (3V)
AM2302 Temp/Humidiy (5V)
AT Mega 2560 (since I was running out of pins and horsepower)
SD Card Shield
4D Systems uLCD-32PTU-AR (5V) with Shield and Programming Cable.

The code to do sensor capture is well documented at Adafruit as is the code to write to the SD card shield. All I did was write to a CSV file every minute after I got things tuned.

The 4D systems stuff was interesting. Essentially, they have an Arduino lib and until the last time I worked on it (and got it working) was hogging serial communications. Their latest lib doesn't do that and is now configurable. They have a Windows-based interface builder app for the interface and all you have to do is write values to the hex value of the interface component (in my case, a 4 place digital readout) of the display object.

I was working on another project and that's why I chose the touch screen. You don't really need one. I had hooked up some other electronics (can't say here) that was using threshold values that were set on with the 4D Systems slider component. I recommend 4D because of the their builder. Essentially, you write with their interface builder to a micro-SD, plug it into the powered shield (without the Arduino hooked up) and it shows you what you built. You then hook it up to the Arduino and start writing values to it. They have an excellent example here: http://www.4dsystems.com.au/downloads/A ... REV1.0.pdf

Sparkfun has a very abbreviated video on doing integration with the 4D Systems Touch interfaces but there was a load of "figuring it out" stuff after they gave me a clue. In general, between Sparkfun getting me going, then reading the above doc, I had a direction to go in.

My biggest challenges: Getting voltage right since there was a huge drag from the SD card reader and figuring out that the AT Mega was pinned differently than the Uno.

I would say stay tuned. I tore down what I built (a bad habit) I'm likely to dump the Arduino version of this and build a R-PI version due to the networking and web server features of the PI.

The funny thing is: I never built an enclosure...I put it in a small plastic tackle box.

Key learnings: Since the 4D systems display has it's own logic board, you have a three-way triangle of logic between the sensors, the display and arduino. I haven't done anything like that for an incredibly long time.

I can very easily see a touch screen version of the Rostock as the result of this work. I don't know if it would add anything beyond sex appeal. The slider controls on the touch display were spotty and lacked precision....

[Flateric]

Nice to see you back John!

I was just thinking about you and when you might return to our fine home here one day.

Be good to have you around again!

[626Pilot]

Good to see you again. Do you have any screenshots of this aluminum base? I'm getting a giant CNC table this week so maybe I'll give it a shot when it's ready. If I can get the machine to cut aluminum properly I can get you some decent pricing if you want me to send you prototypes.

[Eaglezsoar]

Good to see you back online again!
PS- I sure would like to see a prototype of that aluminum base even if it's just drawings.

[JohnStack]

Before the last round of (unpublished) drawings and now, I have a few ideas I might incorporate. I can't start getting back into it until Dec. 1. I'm on a gig that's sucking up most of my time. Jan 1, promise...