You might be enjoying a trip to the Pacific coast one day, hoping to see some whales, and stumble upon this…
just felt like doing a little nice thing for the world…
You might be enjoying a trip to the Pacific coast one day, hoping to see some whales, and stumble upon this…
just felt like doing a little nice thing for the world…
Ha, that title makes me sound so evil.
See… this library actually leaves their 3D printers unsupervised, and the patrons use them how they please. I love it, getting people exposed to the latest tech is our goal. But this means that people do not realize how to properly remove filament from the printers, leading to tangles and knots in the filament spools. A single mistake could essentially render a $20 spool useless, it becomes a time bomb for printer jams, making people unhappy.
No amount of posters or instructions booklets could embed the same kind of discipline that a 3D printer owner has regarding filament treatment. Just a simple mistake of letting the filament go could cause a knot in the spool.
My solution… make them use cartridges that make it hard to make mistakes. These cartridges must be cheap, fast to make, easy to understand, reusable, and do not require modifying the printer to use. Don’t worry, there’s no DRM bull**** and they are adjustable to fit any standard spools. If my idea causes more problems than it solves, simply clip all the zip ties and go back to status-quo.
For my antweight combat robot DetCord, I wanted a wheel that could improve upon the Banebots wheels that I used before. I wanted something shock absorbing, which would extend the life of my gearboxes. The tires need to be soft and have high traction. The wheel does not have to be very strong because the robot has thick armour to protect the wheels.
I ended up with a cool way to make a wheel that’s cleaner than the more popular methods I see on the internet! Continue reading
If you owned any good laptops, you might have a charger that had a curved shape, and/or a strap to help you wrap the cord. Well… The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is an amazing computer but it’s charger doesn’t even have a strap. So I’ve decided to solve this problem with 3D printing.
The filament I used is actually black 3mm polyurethane filament, which is both strong and flexible. Printed using my Ultimaker2, upgraded with a Flex3Drive, at 250 degrees C, layer height of 0.2mm, and 200% extrusion.
Funny that the strap would’ve been too long to be printed straight, that’s why I made it squiggly.
The model file is shared as a public model on Onshape here. Go ahead and download it, or even copy it to your own account to make modifications.
I got a new Nomad 883 Pro and it generates a lot of dust. This is going to be a big problem as I need to cut material that have hazardous fibers. I decided to make a dust skirt (aka vacuum skirt or vacuum shoe or vacuum head) so that a vacuum can suck up dust as the machine cuts. I 3D printed this thing, which is partly PLA plastic, and the skirt is 3D printed TPU (polyurethane) filament. The skirt is two layered and the cuts are made in a interleaved pattern so there’s a better seal. 3D printing makes this project really easy, just clean up the print, superglue, and tap the hole for the screw. The vacuum hose is 1.25 inch diameter and it just shoves right in with a perfect fit.
The CAD files can be downloaded here
I got a Parrot Rolling Spider for fun. The batteries are 570mAH and the life is under 10 minutes, plus the reviews often mention that the batteries will lose their capacity quickly. Further research into this problem indicated that charging them slowly will alleviate this problem.
I wanted a few spare batteries and a way to recharge them. I decided to DIY a dock for them. I had a handful of spare parts, such as the MCP73831 and plenty of small perfboards. All I needed to do was 3D print something to hold the batteries in place, and this is what I came up with.
More pictures if you continue reading.
Continue reading
Well… I was originally going to use a dummy grenade instead, but I didn’t want to get shot when I get pulled over, or get the bomb squad in my car when I’m parked.
3D printed a mount for my Garmin BC 30 wireless camera to go along with my Garmin NuviCam LMTHD GPS navigator. My car is a 2011 Hyundai Santa Fe.
Remember my Aquarium Computer? I thought the SSD looked boring, so I put a old-school HDD inside with all the guts exposed, and wired it electrically to spin and swing when there is hard drive activity (when the HDD activity LED blinks).
But I have a deep dark secret…
This is an upgrade to the Ultimaker2 3D printer for people who have spools that do not fit the original spool holder, and spools that are too tight and thus do not feed smoothly, causing under-extrusion.
It is composed of two assemblies: a replacement for the filament guide and a replacement for the spool holder. Both utilizes ordinary skateboard bearings to achieve smooth rotation. The conical shape of the spool holder allows for any sized spool to be used, easily swapped because it uses a wing nut.
Files are available on YouMagine. I want to emphasize that I am sharing the STEP files, not just STL, because STL are harder for people to import and modify than STEP files. SolidWorks files are also provided.
The cross section images shows you how to assemble the upgrade parts. The screw diameters are #6 for the filament guide and 5/16″ for the spool holder. Please figure everything else out from the cross section images.
Most micro (palm sized) quadcopters are RTF and comes with a crappy cheap transmitter, and I really want to use my awesome expensive Taranis. I found out that Q-Bot comes with a tiny transmitter module that I can connect to my Taranis.
I didn’t want some ugly thing dangling off of my Taranis so I decided to 3D print a module that will contain the Q-Bot transmitter circuitry and plug into the Taranis’ module bay, which fits “JR” style transmitter modules.
and here is what it looked like before:
The 3D files (SLDPRT, STEP, STL) Continue reading
Continuing from my previous FrSky X4R-SB hack (read for some context), I really wanted Smart Port telemetry to work with Naze32. I forked the original baseflight firmware and added two key new functionalities:
please read my fork’s wiki, at this time, I can only test with my limited hardware, more help testing/coding would be appreciated.
Update 10/26/2014: I was asked to make the same contribution to Cleanflight, which I have done today.
The new forked firmware requires a circuit modification on both the X4R-SB and Naze32, see pictures: Continue reading
I am building a quadcopter using a FrSky Taranis X9D radio. It came with a FrSky X8R receiver. I wanted to keep my wiring clean by using the S.BUS feature on the FrSky receivers, I purchased a smaller FrSky X4R-SB receiver. The X8R has 8 PWM channel pins and the X4R-SB has 3 PWM channel pins, but if I use S.BUS (which is serial, not PWM), I can access 16 channels using only 1 pin, on both X8R and X4R-SB. The X4R-SB is much smaller, making it more ideal. (do not confuse the X4R-SB with the D4R-II, this is important, D4R-II uses CPPM, not S.BUS)
(update 10/25/2014: a follow up hack for Smart Port)
I want to use a Naze32 flight controller, which is open source and does have code to interpret S.BUS protocol. S.BUS is UART communication but it is inverted and the Naze32’s UART cannot accept inverted input. Continue reading
There is a law of the universe which states that if you own a Raspberry Pi and a 3D printer, you must print a case for it.
There are plenty of case designs for the original R-Pi Model B, and some for the R-Pi Model B+, but there are a few minor annoyances I noticed about them. Plus I really like DIY my own designs, so I designed my own case to suit my own needs.
These parts are because I am going to set up a web server for my 3D printer, running OctoPrint and also serving live video through the camera. I also setup a cron job to take a picture periodically and upload it to this server. I can also stream video to my Ustream channel. (neither of these servers are 24/7)
I am sharing all of the source files for the models, not just STL files. It is very annoying when people only share STL files, because STL are not import or editing friendly. With my SLDPRT file, you can change one height dimension inside and it will re-adjust the entire case, maybe if you need more clearance on the bottom for screws.
I have 3D printed many things recently. Here are two items that you will find interesting (they are interesting to me because I am experimenting with certain design techniques). One is a box to hold delicate drill bits. The other is a filament spool holder for my Ultimaker.
Please continue reading.
Continue reading
I got a new 3D printer, a Ultimaker 2. After testing it out with some small test prints, I printed my first own custom design on this printer. (I’ve only designed for SLT printing previously and not extrusion printing before, this is my first design for extrusion printing).
It’s an adapter that holds my smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Note 3 with a wireless charging S-View flip cover case) and has threads (a 1/4″-20 threaded nut) so it can be mounted to a standard camera tripod. This phone has 4K video recording so why not?
The design is very custom because I need to consider the fact that I have a S-View flip cover case.
(I know I could also use threaded metal inserts, but nuts are easier to buy at the local Home Depot)
Summer is coming so I was worried about cooling the PS4. This stand lifts the PS4 off the desk a bit to give it more airflow. I had this cut by Ponoko, using 9mm thick clear acrylic. If you want to make your own, click here to download the EPS file, follow Ponoko’s instructions.
Another way is to 3D print them using black ABS, but I don’t have a 3D printer. The acrylic is left over from another project, hence why I used it.
This is a simple 6 port USB device charger with a individual current monitor on each port. The charging current is indicated using RGB LEDs. Blue means slow charge (under 250mA), green means 250mA to 750mA, red means over 750mA, and purple means over 1500mA (for tablets). This circuit involves an ATmega328P (if you do hobby electronics, I bet you have plenty spares of these), INA169 (check out this breakout board), and a OKR-T10-W12.
While this project is not as impressive as my other projects in terms of difficulty, I soldered and Continue reading
I don’t really like my “third-hand” tool so I decided to build a better one using flexible ball-jointed coolant spraying pipe hoses. It’s not a totally new idea, SparkFun even sells some of these parts as a kit. But my way is slightly better, and I got the hoses from eBay (look for “Flexible Water Oil Coolant Pipe Hose for Lathe CNC”) instead because SparkFun’s prices were excessively expensive.
Continue reading
I got a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 as soon as it was released. I wanted a S-View flip cover for it. S-View basically means the screen will automatically turn on and off when you open and close the cover. It is also able to reformat the display to show important notifications through the square viewing window of the cover, etc. The phone knows if the flip cover is opened or closed because there’s a tiny magnet inside the cover.
But all of the official S-View flip covers available are very expensive at about $60 each. The cheap covers might look like S-View covers, but they do not support the actual S-View functionality. But the cheap covers are about $5. I wanted to hack a $5 to give it S-View functionality. Continue reading
I made a breakout board for the STM32F405RGT from ST.
Continue reading
I am currently working with Adafruit on Trinket stuff, because of my experience with USB and V-USB. Recently I wrote a bunch of simple tutorials and libraries for Trinket:
C Library to Make DIY Wiimote Extensions with AVR Microcontrollers
This is a library that gives an AVR microcontroller the ability to act as a Wiimote extension controller (Nunchuk, Classic Controller, Guitar Hero 3 controller, Guitar Hero World Tour guitar controller, Guitar Hero World Tour drum controller, etc). The library has two parts: the I2C slave device and Wiimote protocol handling. It can be used with AVR-GCC, and it is possible to adapt it to work with Arduino if you know how to include the files into your sketch properly.
I have many projects, but some of them are just short code libraries and snippets that I don’t want to allocate an entire blog post for. For more information on each, visit the link and read the “readme” provided.
LufaUsbAspLoader, a USB bootloader that combines LUFA and USBaspLoader, so it can be used in low-speed USB devices
Arduino-UsiSerial-Library, written mostly for Trinket, works for all ATtiny microcontrollers with a USI
Adafruit-Trinket-USB, a small collection of libraries that enable USB capabilities for Trinket, and other ATtiny V-USB projects
I replicated the functionality of a Turnigy ESC programming card. These programming cards are meant to configure electronic speed controllers (ESC). I always wanted to know how they work. Eventually I purchased one since I need one for my quadrotor helicopter’s ESC, and then I started playing with it.
It should be very simple to adapt the code to any microcontroller.
https://github.com/frank26080115/LufaXmegaSerial/
I’m working on a XMEGA-A3BU Xplained board, along with Arduino IDE. (normally I’d stay away from anything related to Arduino but this time I’m forced). I connecting a FT232 for debugging is a pain so I modified LUFA and turned it into an Arduino library, so I can use print and println for debugging.
I am a big fan of creative business cards that actually represent who you are and what you do. In 2012, I was a coop student working for a biotech company in Ottawa, Spartan Bioscience. I wanted a card that is relevant to biology, and that got me thinking about microscopes.
Side note: this card is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal (click for the article & video), but she only mentions it briefly, she interviewed me about my other USB business card and I told her a bit about this card as well. This took place literally on the day I finished making this card.
It is supposed to look like a microscope slide with a drop of blood. It says “use a microscope to see my DNA” on it.
Under a microscope…
The GG button (link to original website) is a button that yells “GG” when you press it. Similar to the Staples Easy Button.
I modified it so that it has a USB port and it becomes a USB keyboard when you plug it into a computer. When you press the button, it types out a certain key sequence. The key sequence is such that it chats “GG WP” to an opponent in Starcraft II, and then surrenders the game (by pressing F10, then ‘n’).
Here are some other old small projects. These are probably from my high school days. Some are from my university days. I’ve collected them all onto this one post when I moved my website.