This week’s assignment is “complete missed assignments”, “contribute to tutorials” etc. All my assignments will be posted to as220.org/~makeda so stay “tuned”.

Right now however, I’m working to complete the electronics for Jonathan’s A-Z pcb mill and working on David’s Mantis machine for the Machine Design module. Noah got EMC working on one of our computers and right now we’re working on fabbing the 4-axis brute force stepper controller.

For interfaces and application programming I’m working on an accelerometer controlled etch-a-sketchish drawing project. I got a “proof of concept” sort of program running with Arduino and Processing. I’m planing to replace the Arduino with a fabbed pcb board. I’d like to re-write the graphical interface in another language but I’m not quite sure on that right now.

For actuators and displays I’m revisiting a project that I did some time ago with two piece light system that turns on when the pieces touch. I’m using step response to create a touch sensor. I’ve had to remake the step response board with a tiny44 so that I’d have enough pins for two LED arrays. When I routed the board I ended up using both sides so right now I’m doing some experiments on making double sided boards…

maybe a bit of a digression but useful nonetheless.

For the embedded networking module, I got a network of two nodes to talk to itself but not to the computer. My hub keeps breaking so it would be helpful to redesign it with through-hole components or something not so prone to tearing. I’m continuing trouble shooting on that and hopefully will have it working soon . Documentation is next.

Final project has been on the back burner a bit but I’ll be picking that back up hopefully soon. (Soon as in there are about 5 weeks left in the semester…:)

Tutorials and documentation:

I pretty much ditched my WordPress page in favor of building a html page from scratch http://www.as220.org/~makeda (using css and php). I like the format a lot better and it’s easier to edit and control. I (heart) html

Other:

The conference me software we’ve been using for video conferencing seems to regularly have communication glitches…it seems a bit slower than XMeeting or Polycom. That may just be our connection though as I haven’t heard anyone else having the same problem.

A few years ago, I made these star-shaped boxes on the laser cutter with thin (1/8″) plywood.  For this assignment, I thought I’d scale up the design and make a few for my mom.  

In my original design I used tension fits to pressfit it together, which was fine on a small scale.  As I contemplated the modifications I’d have to make to scale it up, I realized that I’d need to actually model it in 3D and carve angled edges to accommodate the angled corners of a star shape.  I did  the 3D modeling assignment, but I did it in SketchUp because I didn’t have the time  to become sufficiently competent in Blender.  

Eliot, (one of the student in my class) hadn’t completed the 3D assignment so he made a model in Blender and carved it on the ShopBot.  I figured I could do the same with my project and become proficient (sortof at least)  in a more conventional 3D modeling environment while completing my CNC machining assignment.

Not so fast.

It was the middle of the first week before I reached a solid decision. (I was still working on hacking parts for our PCB Fab assignment from the previous module…aahhh.)  After seeing what Eliot was doing and playing around a little bit I decided that this could only be so hard.  Thats true of course, but “only so hard” turned out to be about 4 times more confusing than I had thought.

We played around with the program, completely ignoring the “extrude” tool for the first couple of days in favor of an agonizingly complex and excruciatingly inefficient combination of {select-push/pull-cut-delete-create face-face is warped-cut again-delete extra faces and edges-it looks good-no its skewed-cut-my brain is now crashing} rinse and repeat as many times as needed… method.

By the time we found our good friend “extrude” again, it was Friday.  I planned to work on it over the weekend.  Not surprisingly by Monday, one crazy weekend and two non-supportive computers later, there was no virtual star-shelf to be ushered into the analog world.

Shawn agreed to come up to the Boston lab to help me with the ShopBot on Tuesday.  Switching to crisis mode I decided to make a sign for our lab instead.

When Shawn arrived in Boston I had an Inkscape file ready to cut.

*to be continued…*