Handed In

Yay!

Long time, no post.  I've now finished and submitted my thesis.  It's difficult to describe the relief and the euphoria of that weight lifting from my shoulders!  I'm looking to the many tasks I've put on hold pending my submission, that I expect I'll be even busier than before, but at least I won't be writing.  Yes, I have to defend my work in cross examination, but I know my stuff and an that in comparison to writing up should be a doddle and hope to only get minor corrections.

I'll try and not repeat my extended break from posting - I could have posted what I've been researching, but it's sufficiently off topic from my adventures into 3D printing (or not) with the SumPod, as to be irrelevant.

I see Mr Sum, has been busy with some notable changes in the design.
Take care all.
SumPod Guinea Pig

Surprise

I received a surprise parcel on Saturday from Mr Sum, just one day after he sent it. The postal service obviously doesn't loose all of his parcels it seems, they must be losing their touch.  The parcel contained most of the missing parts for my SumPod and an incomplete hotend v2.  It would be so much easier to tell with a picklist what parts are missing - at least at Ikea you know what you're supposed to have and tell what's missing (and the customer service is a lot better too).

Over the weekend I built the supplied parts into my SumPod and loaded the SumPod Sprinter firmware.  After double checking connections, I excitedly powered up the SumPod to test the three axis of motion and experienced a sinking feeling, not the light-headed, vomit inducing miss-typed dd or clicking hard drive variety, thank goodness, just a 'frustrated this should work, here we go again' feeling in anticipation of the inevitable fault finding.  The stepper motors were 'spazzing' (a well known technical term) and would turn when a finger was prodded onto pins of the Pololu driver - a fault finding technique I recommend (after discharging any static) to indicate floating pins with a little capacitive coupling.  I was concerned the Pololu drivers had been damaged having missed the tell tale 'magic smoke' while reassembling the electronics and connecting it to the SumPod.  Had rousing them from an extended slumber damaged them?  Who knows, they had been in a box on a shelf since mid October...

Hello World GLCD Version

I thought people may be interested in another hello world LCD demo, but instead of using a standard alphanumeric display, I'm using a snazzy graphical one.  The display is only black and white.  Control could consist of only a couple of pins and a port expander.

I fully intend to use this circuitry and software in my robotics and RFID projects, but wondered if rather than using a larger alphanumeric display with the new menu system, a graphical display might be more suitable.  I'm not sure how much info needs to be displayed so I'm open to ideas.  Ideas on a postcard please - okay use the comments section below instead.

My code is an adapted version of the sample code from the Arduino website.  Is a GLCD the next logical step for the SumPod?  Let me know what you think.

SumPod Guinea Pig is sleepy.
Zzzz...

A week on

Hi all,

My SumPod sits there in a box, glum and lifeless.  What is the cause of this malady, you enquire.  Is it the the economic downturn or the cold grey mornings?  No, guess again.  Maybe because yesterday was the most depressing day of the year?  Still no.  Okay last guess - did the promised parcel of missing SumPod parts arrive?  Unfortunately, no it didn't and that's not for a lack of chasing - what an unfortunate state of affairs.

So I am left pondering my options and remember ruefully when I created this blog, it was to share my experiences and document the build of my SumPod, not to talk about its inventor and supplier Richard Sum.

Suffice to say I'd like to have a working machine and start making things.  I'm confident this is going to happen one way or another.  This blog for a start would be a more colourful place with images of my 'creations' as I attempt to calibrate my SumPod. :)  But in the meantime I remain positive and as the saying goes 'every cloud has a silver lining' - the SumPod would make a lovely paper weight, just check out the paint job, that even a large piece of paper in a force ten gale could not escape. That and the helpful staff at the Office of Fair Trading.