Author: Keegan

Now I’ve finished rebuilding my old printer so it actually works I’ve a printer that can print big things fast. That’s because it has a 0.8mm nozzle, most printers have 0.4mm, and an E3D Volcano hotend.

This thing really shifts!

For context, the parts for the first half of the dual enclosure would’ve taken about 22 hours with my Prusa and the stock nozzle, with Chonk (seemed a good name) it printed the lot in 9 hours!

The top enclosure will take longer as it has a hatch top on it to handle the multi material unit. Still, it should be around 40 hours rather than 70 at least…

To finish this section I need to get the acrylic walls and doors fitted, they’re on order, and a spool holder sorted.

Slowly getting this room together, likely I’ll finish just as the new workshop is ready to move in to…

Picking up where I left off around a year ago, the battery is screwed so rigged up to the charger from MacFeegle Prime to power it for now.

First up I’m getting the motors working again and after that I’ll get the encoders on the wheels working. The encoders will allow me to measure the speed they are turning at so that the two sides match. As the motors are simple DC motors we give the controller a percentage and they spin. With feedback from the encoders we can implement greater control.

Another use for the encoders is odometry, we can keep track of how many rotations have occurred and coupling that with the circumference of the wheels we can measure how far the robot has moved. This is incredibly useful for mapping and navigation.

My projects are like a logic puzzle at the minute and I’ve finally got one bit in place. My old POS printer is reborn! I needed to design a new carriage to hold the extruder which was a pain but only took a few days and I’ll release that file soon.

Now this is done I can print the parts for my stack of enclosures, this’ll let me organise my office better (or at all) and everything should hey easier from thereon out.

NE-1 now has Bluetooth as well, I’m writing a simple keyboard interface for that so it can be remote controlled so progress is ongoing. Hopefully things will settle more that I’ve one project or of the way at least!

Only a quick update but I’ve got the motors and encoders rigged up on NE-1 and it drives!

A more detailed video will be coming soon.

I’ve been looking at the Roomba today and remembered that back when it still vaguely worked I did a series of short videos where I reverse engineered the internals to the point where I could remote control it.

I’m not going to lie, it was quite janky and I never really got it working properly as non of the sensors were rigged up so it couldn’t work autonomously.  The video above was taken last year when I decided to apply for PiWars, I figured if I could get this vaguely working I’d prove to myself I would be able to build a bot for PiWars.

The full playlist can be found here, I’ll cover bits of this in more detail as I get it back up and running:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrgVm1tFTk&list=PL4HAiVK8OXQrntvT2TwVWvxU145qkvjUu&index=1

Thankfully past-Keegan reminded me that the battery is shot, thankfully I’ve parts to make a new one so all good there.  It’s saved me some troubleshooting at least!

Much has been a’doing!  

I’m wiring up the chassis for NE-1 at the minute, just using breadboard, jumpers and hot-glue at the minute.  Once I get things working I’ll switch to perma-proto board and an actual lid for the chassis.  Also just running off AA batteries at the minute, I’ll make the new battery pack over the next few weeks too.

My project to rebuild my old printer is going brilliantly!  I used my Prusa to print the parts, designed a new holder for the bed sensor and managed to get it to print first time!  The photos with the cubes shows the best I could manage before in red with the old printer (after a lot of hacking too), and the orange are the first two prints with the rebuild!  The quality is already much better and nothing has been tuned yet.

Unfortunately the extruder carriage isn’t ideal for this new setup, the nozzle can’t reach all of the bed and the sensor hits the cable cover at the rear of the bed.  Plan is to design a new carriage as I’ve not found anything online that’ll fit the Titan Aero I’m using, this means I can upgrade to the E3D Volcano hotend too.  As I’ll be printing big things with this the Volcano will let me run filament through it *much* faster so it’ll be able to keep up.

Finally, the long mentioned occupancy sensor for The Castle Tap.  I went to install it last weekend, worked late in to the night to fix a bug in the radio code and somehow just broke everything.  It’s been a pain for a while so I’ve changed tack and switched to ESP32 boards for the controllers.  The have a wifi chip built in so no need for external modules, the biggest benefit is the ESP-NOW protocol that ExpressIf released for the board.

I wired them up, dropped some code on to test the mesh networking, and it worked.  

It. Just. Worked.  

After fighting the damn radio modules for a few months it was kinda anti-climactic but a hell of a relief.  I’ll get the sensor code and logic ported over and hopefully that’ll be that up and running.  The boards are a bit more expensive than the Arduinos I was using but as I don’t need separate radio modules it works out cheaper overall, also, they actually work!

Next video for the NE-1 robot will likely be Monday, I’m hoping to have it driving around over Bluetooth and being able to use the encoders for distance based control too. 

A staple of the 3d printing community, Ikea Lack tables make for excellent enclosures. I’m waiting on a third to be delivered and a whole bunch of parts need printing but my workspace is slowly coming together.

Tomorrow I crack on with the Roomba!

The legs are straight by the way, a very weird lens effect going on there.

My first video in the NE-1 series is up on YouTube!  Early access for patrons now, it’ll be public for everyone else on Wednesday.

I’ve thrown together a simple mockup of the layout for my new skateboard to check clearance and whatnot, It’ll be tight but should work a treat!

It’ll be dual motor, one front and one rear, and I’ll be mounting both behind the trucks so if I hit a curb they wont be destroyed.  It does have a kicktail but I’ll not be using it as a brake needless to say!  I will still be putting a protective cage around the rear motor to be safe though.

Almost got all the parts printed for my new printer, that’ll need doing before finishing this off and I’m continuing work on the Occupancy Sensor for the pub too.  If there are no more complications from that I’ll be sharing more info soon.

Pubs have reopened but the threat of covid hasn’t yet passed, social distancing is key but how do you know if the toilets are free without going in to the toilets? This is the problem I was given to solve by a friend who runs The Castle Tap in Reading.

The solution I’m building, and installing tomorrow, is a combination of motion sensors to detect when someone enters the main room, distance sensors to track it someone is sat on the throne or in front of the urinals, and a footswitch either end of the alley way to control a traffic light.

It’s gloriously over engineered but should work a treat! I’ll be writing up how to build and install it as well as a video demo and all the code needed to build one if anyone else has need.

This setup uses the same radio transceivers in planning on using in future robotics projects so excellent learnings for those!