Steve Presley's views on mobile, wireless, embedded, CNC and .NET programming

Zenbot 12x16 CNC Intro photos and info

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 22:04:07 GMT

I’ve been meaning to get around to this post for a while but never seemed to make time to do it. I recently joined the Unofficial Zenbot User's Group on Yahoo Groups and someone asked about IGUS wire chain. Since my setup took some “perfecting”, I was more than happy to post the dimensions to the group. I also promised I would take pics, so here they are!

In December 2010, I purchased a new house with a garage which meant I now had space for the Zenbot CNC router I had my eye on for some time. Being a gadget geek, the next logical extension of programming and gadget is to buy gadgets to make other gadgets with! I had been lurking on a few of the CNC forums (mostly CNCZone.com) and even though there wasn’t much information at that time, I settled on the Zenbot. There wasn’t much about Zenbot at that time on the forums, but comparing specs, prices and availability, I decided to go with the Zenbot 16x24 model with the Hitachi M12VC mount, the optional Zenbot Control box and got the discounted copy of Mach3 control software as well. I had corresponded with Shaun a few times before ordering, he was really responsive and answered the questions I had, mainly whether I would be able to mill aluminum with this setup.

As for spindle selection, one of the things I really like about the Zenbot was that Shaun offered several different mounts ranging from handhelds to routers. I wanted a “proper” spindle, not a Dremel 300, Bosch Colt or RotoZip RZ1500 handheld as I wanted to do some milling of HDPE and Aluminum, and would need larger bits and horsepower to do the roughing and/or detail work in less passes. After my reading, I settled on the Hitachi M12VC for a few reasons:

Cost – it was available for less than $100 US, typically in the 79-89 range on Amazon or in my local big box hardware store where I found one “on clearance” for $69 – strangely I still see them in there on a regular basis and they are certainly not on clearance, I think they may have just been marked wrong for a week or so.
Collet Size – although the unit came with both 1/4” and 1/2” collets, I quickly found precision collets available from precisebits.com with much less run out than the stock collets at what I think are very reasonable prices. I haven’t ordered these yet, but I plan to pickup the Ultra-Precision 1618 collet kit (also works with the Bosch 1618 router) BOUP-1618-842KIT (117.95 US) which includes the precision 1/8”, 1/4” and 1/2” Ultra Precision collets, collet nut, spanner and 118 ml of Collet Care lube as well as the 3/8” Ultra Precision collect BOUP-1618-3/8 (29.95 US).
Power – 2-1/4 Horsepower compared to the very low HP of the handheld spindles. Although the Bosch 1618 has the same HP as the Hitachi, it was typically 20-50% more, mainly I believe due to the self-releasing collets that are included.

Now that I had decided on the spindle and placed my order, all I had to do was wait for the approximately 3 weeks it took for Shaun to make my Zenbot and ship it from California to Virginia. I had a couple of weeks off to move into the new house, so a nice reward at the end of moving everything was a good sized heavy box showing up on my doorstep.

One other reason I really like the Zenbot package is that according to the website and Shaun, the only thing I had to do when I got it was mount the trestle to the X axis, mount the spindle to the Z, calibrate it and I would be ready to go. As promised, it showed up, I did exactly the things above, plugged the cables into the controller box, loaded mach3 and started jogging the thing around with about 20 minutes – part of which was me mounting the trestle backwards, taking the hex head cap screws back out, flipping it round and putting them back in. I then did what everyone else who just paid $1300 for a piece of precision equipment would do - used masking tape to mount a Sharpie pen to the spindle mount and started drawing things! (sorry, no pics of this setup!)

I started playing with the cable routing along my workbench and decided that I would need longer Y and Z axis cables, so emailed Shaun and he made them up for me at a nominal charge and had them to be in less than a week.

Next, although I had already ordered it back when I placed my Zenbot order, I had yet to take my Kent CNC dust shoe out of the box and mount it to my spindle. I was attracted to this shoe over others as the shoe itself wasn’t hard-mounted to the spindle or the Z-axis – it’s two plates that are held together with magnets, so you can leave the mount on and not have to fool with screwdrivers or hex keys to get it on and off every time you need to change bits. He also offers different size fingers – I ordered the stock one with 3” fingers, although as you will see in one pic below, the fingers closest to the end mill sometimes trail right into the path of the mill and have been given a free haircut! Lastly, he is a fellow CNC enthusiast and his site has video of him cutting out the shoes on his own CNC to demonstrate the product.

So back to why I hadn’t taken it out of the box yet – which actually isn’t true. I had taken it out to inspect it, so really, why hadn’t I mounted it yet.. I hadn’t cut anything yet mainly because I didn’t want to make a mess. Don’t worry though, my plan to deal with the mess was on its way from Amazon. Again, after much reading, I picked the heart of my dust control system - the Delta 50-760 1.5HP 1,200CFM vertical bag dust collector. You can barely see it in some of the pics below, I have spoil board (insulating foam) stacked in front of it, so you can’t see the whole thing. The garage isn’t out of winter mode yet, so I’ve got quite a few things in spots they shouldn’t be at the moment. I will get more pics of the entire setup once I’ve cleaned up the clutter.

So one thing that was an issue with the dust shoe is that it is made to sit flush with the bottom of the router housing. The spindle mount and brackets that Shaun supplies are well engineered and give the most solid mounting available – at the upper most and lower most positions once you take the router base off. That means the bottom of the spindle mount and lower bracket sit flush with the bottom of the router. I immediately unscrewed the mounts, pulled the router part-way out, insert the dust shoe mount above the lower most mount and slid it back down. Problem sorted! (or so I thought) Turns out that the dust shoe frame doesn’t like a .75” piece of black HDPE insert between itself and its mount. DOH! Unscrewed everything, pulled the router back up, pulled out the dust shoe and then proceeded to try and relocate the lower mount. As it turns out it’s pretty hard to get perfectly aligned holes, even when using a drill press, that don’t kick the router out of plumb. I shot Shaun (yet another) email describing my dilemma and the dust shoe and he cut me a new spindle mount .75” shorter with the holes moved up appropriately, again for nominal cost. I had it in less than a week and next thing you know, I was ready to cut!

While I was waiting for the new spindle mount, I tackled connecting the Zenbot to the Delta Dust collector. I use 4” clear dust collector hose by Woodstock. I chose clear hose so that I can see if there are obstructions that need to be cleared, and also it’s pretty cool to see the dust being sucked out into the collection can when the mill is cutting. You can’t really see much with the dust shoe on, so this is the next best thing!

As for the dust collection can – instead of using the clear collection bag that comes the Delta as the main collector, several people that left reviews on Amazon clued me in to running the 4” hose into a 4” elbow that points into a 30 gallon metal trash can, then cut another hole in the trash can lid and attach the output of that to the 5” input of the Delta. Not only does this give you a larger collection hopper, but since the larger pieces of waste wood material get sucked up along with the sawdust, they will fall to the bottom of the can since they are heavy pieces – not a big deal until you think about what would happen if they went straight through the inlet on the motor – they get sucked through the impeller! Once I start cutting aluminum, guess who’s going to win before too long… so I picked up a 30 gallon can from my local hardware store, cut two holes in the lid and used construction adhesive “weld” in two blast gates that I picked up on Amazon as well. I connected the 4” blast gate to the 4” clear hose and cut a short length hose to connect the 4” elbow to the other side of the blast gate inside the can. I connected the 5” blast gate to some 5” Semi-Rigid Flexible Aluminum Duct (be careful, very sharp when you cut it with tin snips) and then to the inlet on the bottom of the Delta induction housing using Murray 5” worm gear clamps.

I’ve also added some IGUS eChain, e16 series 33” x 4.54” x 1.54” to be exact that I bought from a supplier on eBay. This really helps with the cable management – before I had one of those swinging plant hanger “arms” and some zip ties and you had to keep an eye out to make sure nothing got pinched. the eChain really takes that worry away (although it took some fiddling with the mounting methods and a few different size of eChain before I have it where it’s at now.

Lastly, you’ll see in the pictures that I have a large air pump with some blue insulated air hose next to the setup. The goal is to have this blow on the spindle to reduce heat and help clear away the chips. I haven’t fabbed up a mount yet, and for the most part, the Kent dust shoe picks up the majority of the saw dust that I’ve cut so far (although not all as you can see in the pics). The majority of particles that get past the dust collection system are either because I’m doing a test cut and run a sequence without the shoe itself on (you’d be surprised how much just having the vacuum hose nearby does pick up though) or the dust left in the cracks when you profile down to cut out the pieces.

Things that aren’t pictured below: Zenbot Control Box, the Dell PC that I bought on ebay for $120 to run Mach3, Vectric VCarve Pro 6.5 / Cut3d and the controller (as well as my MakerBot Replicator when I don’t want to print from the SD card)

So finally, here are the pics! (click on the thumbnail to see a larger version)

My setup as it sits facing the bench. Control box and PC are to the left. The Y-axis eChain is actually screwed the the bench (close up pics below)

The setup if you’re standing to the right of it. Here you can see the dust shoe mount and the 4” clear hose going up to the overhead mounts I’ve setup.

The setup if you’re standing behind it (I reached the camera around the vacuum hose to take this pic). I have a scrap piece of 1/2” think pine that the Z axis is resting on. I don’t like leaving it to rest under its own weight with the router mounted – especially with an end mill in the collet. This piece of scrap could stand to be 1/2 an inch or so higher as I have to press down on the dust shoe’s fingers to get the frame lip around the spindle and up.

A few pics of the dust shoe un-mounted and mounted. The first pic is of the shoe frame with fingers laying upside down on the bench. You’ll want to leave it laying upside down when it’s off, otherwise the weight of the shoe frame will bend the fingers to one direction or the other and they tend to stay that way unless you leave it with them bent the other way over a day or two. The second pic is with the shoe mounted on the spindle.

Here is a pic from “bench level” in which you can see the dust shoe mounted and near the center can see the fingers that have been “trimmed” by the end mill. Next is a pic to see part of the hose routing. There is a little bit of a flat spot that I need to correct by spinning the hose on the dust shoe mount, but it hasn’t contributed to any less suction than when I had it spun correctly during mockup. I’m using some shelving brackets with zip ties to hold the hose above the bench and still allow some play for the the router is moving about the cutting area.

Here are some pics of the Igus eChain mounted. First is of the X-axis, which I mentioned is mounted directly to my workbench top. The second pic shows the room I’ll still have once the blue airline is inserted into the left “channel”. One control cable in each channel and the spindle power cable is fished up both this chain and the Y-axis chain below as well.

Here is a pic of the top of the X-axis chain with the cables coming out to a 90 degree turn into the bottom of the Y-axis chain. Similar to the cable-tie down below for the power cord, I reused an existing tapped hole rather than drilling and tapping another one into the HDPE furniture. I drilled holes in the eChain mounting lip and used longer hex-head cap screws to account for the extra thickness of the plastic on the eChain lip. You’ll notice in a few pics that some of the bolt-heads are rusted. These are cheap hex-head hardware that I picked up and used, not those supplied by Shaun at Zenbot. There are also a few stainless screw heads that you’ll see that I supplied as well.

Here is the Y-axis eChain mounting. In this first pic, we are looking at the bottom section of eChain for the Y-axis. I am using some hex head bolts, washers and nuts that I already had to mount the eChain to a 6” angle bracket, again from the big box store. Here is where I used some of the stainless hex head socket cap bolts to replace the hardware that Shaun sent to compensate for the thickness of the metal.

The second pic shows a top-down view of how the control cable comes out and runs to the Z-axis stepper motor and the thicker black cable is the power line to the router. You can see the bracket I made using some 14 gauge flat stock I picked up, again at my local hardware store. I drilled and tapped the HDPE next to the stepper mount and again am using two hex head socket cap screws to mount to the furniture. I used some hex head bolts, washers and nuts to mount the eChain to the bracket.

Now around to the Z axis. I am using a C-clip style plastic cable clamp to keep the cable in one spot with enough room for the 4” up and down travel of the router. I just threaded the cable tie through one of the mounting screws and screwed it back in. There is plenty of thread on these screws, so it hasn’t introduced any instability. In the second pic you can see the length of cable with enough play for the spindle to go up and down the 4” of travel.

Please leave any questions you may have in the comments. I’m sure there will be plenty of requests for zoom-in pics and of the components I have mentioned but didn’t photograph yet. Also, I’ve yet to capture a video of cutting out anything, but will try to do that soon as well.

Happy CNCing!

FBBC (GHI FBB Connectors)

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:57:55 GMT

GHI Electronics introduced their FBB (FEZ Building Blocks) to allow mounting of Gadgeteer components on plates and in box formats.

Discussion of the FBB product is here, on the tinyclr forum – a great resource for anything .NETMF related.

In the discussion thread, we were discussing ways of assembling the blocks, I had an idea and then came up with version 1 of the block. I envisioned printing out a support structure for 3 pins on each plane to press fit into the 3.2mm holes spaced 5mm on center (per the Gadgeteer spec). This is the first design:

While this version was great on paper (well, in Sketchup), a few problems came about when I printed it out on my Makerbot Replicator (as seen in the picture to the right). Being that the only flat surface was that of the bottom, the object was printed in the orientation as shown, however due to the lack of support for the locating pins on the sides of the faces (not the top), as the plastic filament cooled, they drooped slightly and deformed, thus not being able to fit into the 3.2mm holes.

I also wanted to figure out a way to be able to use #4-40 bolts to affix the plates. I decided to make a few changes, such as making the figure a complete cube to allow threaded holes for the bolts to attach to, which also meant I had to worry about the depth of the bolts and hitting each other. I did some measuring and if I use 1/4” length #4-40 bolts, I had just enough depth with the addition of the plate thickness (1.6mm) that the bolts did not run into each other if screwed in on the front facing corners. That did mean though that the bolts on the top plate would be spaced further out. I decided to flip my idea and have the top bolt holes be those on a 45 degree plane from the corner and the side bolt holes be the in the second row of mounting holes. I added locating pins on the first row of each holes on the corner and made them slightly smaller to account of the drooping of the plastic during cooling.

This is what version 2 looks like in Sketchup:

And here are a few pics of version 2 actually printed out and mounted first, on two rectangular FBB plates, and then with a square plate as the lid:

And here are two blocks holding together 3 smaller rectangular plates and a full plate on the bottom.

I plan to make a few revisions to fix the offset problem with the edges of the FBBs.

I also plan to make a version of this to work with my custom mounting boards (available for sale soon), but they should also work with any other Gagdeteer spec boards, such as those from Nwazet or Tamiya. I also want to make the threaded holes slightly smaller as the holes on the top did not grip as well as those on the front faces (I think the droop actually helped in this instance)

I also plan to make a flat connector to that you can “butt weld” two plates together to extend the length if needed.

Downloads:

Corner Blocks

Version 1 (Sketchup) (STL)

Version 2 (Sketchup) (STL)

Version 3 (coming soon!)

Flat Blocks

Version 1 (coming soon)

Gadgeteer Mood Cube

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 03:51:06 GMT

I’m working with a few .NETMF folks and have been talking with @ransomhall (http://ransomhall.com) about projects to collaborate on.

Eric created a Mood Cube using a GHI FEZ Rhino and 4 BlinkM Smart RGB LEDs.

I created a Gadgeteer version using a FEZ Hydra, USB ClientDP Module and a MultiColor LED Module.

I printed out a 30mm hollow cube (Sketchup file) (STL file) on my MakerBot Replicator.

I then used a mounting board (more details on those coming soon!) that I cut out of acrylic to mount the Hydra and Modules using some bolts and nuts I sourced on Amazon.

Here’s a demo of the cube working:

Here is the code that I used:

using System;


using System;
using GT = Gadgeteer;

namespace MoodLight_Hydra
{
    public partial class Program
    {
        int i = 0;
        int direction = 1;
        int color = 0;
        // This method is run when the mainboard is powered up or reset.   
        void ProgramStarted()
        {
            multicolorLed.GreenBlueSwapped = true;
            GT.Timer timer = new GT.Timer(5);

            timer.Tick += new GT.Timer.TickEventHandler(timer_Tick);
            timer.Start();
        }

        void timer_Tick(GT.Timer timer)
        {
           // Debug.Print("i: " + i);

            switch(color)
            {
                case 0:
                    multicolorLed.SetBlueIntensity(i);
                    break;
                case 1:
                    multicolorLed.SetGreenIntensity(i);
                    break;
                case 2:
                    multicolorLed.SetRedIntensity(i);
                    break;
            }

            if (i >= 255)
            {
                direction = -5;
            }
            else if (i <= 0)
            {
                direction = 5;
                if (color==2)                 
                    color = 0;                
                else
                    color+=1;

            }

            i += direction;

        }
    }
}

Download a zip file of the full project here.

Interested in a mobile / embedded developer user's group in Central Virginia?

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:13:06 GMT

I am gauging interest in running a Mobile / Embedded Developer user's group for the Central Virginia development community.

When people think of mobile applications, they immediately think phone based native applications on fairly tiny screens, however with the proliferation of tablets with larger displays and netbooks pulling apps from the cloud, the mobile scenarios are often more complicated. There is also the demand for enterprise applications to work in more of a consumer model on laptops that will need to share concerns such as data transfer over slower networks, encryption and transactional data processing.

Arduino, Netduino, Gadgeteer and other programmable controller frameworks are gaining in popularity. If you've ever picked up a copy of MAKE magazine, been to Kickstarter.Org or have attended any of the major development conferences or Maker Faires in the past few years, you've seen much of this technology and maybe even attended a session or two. Hardware hacking is all the rage for anything from controller the pitch of the blinds in your house to control the heat, wiring up an old RC car with a webcam to be a security sentry, to equipping a pack of quadcopters to do aerial maneuvers in sync with each other.

If you're interested in attending to learn, socialize, or start a conversation about content that you are interested in or give a presentation about a project you are working on, we would be glad to have you!

Head on over to surveymonkey and fill out my questionairre, leave a comment below or shoot me an email via the contact page!

Richmond Software CraftsmanShip Group on 3/29/12 - It's embedded development night!

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:12:56 GMT

Mike Huffaker and I will be talking about embedded development this coming Thursday at the March meeting of the Richmond Software Craftmanship Group. We meet at the SnagAJob.com offices in Glen Allen, VA. Mike will be discussing Arduino development and I will be talking about .NET MicroFramework (Netduino and Gadgeteer) development and we will contrast the two frameworks.

There’s no real set agenda for the talks, we will basically do some demos and have an open discussion with the group. Whether you want to learn or have something to contribute, we encourage you to show up!

Please RSVP here if you are coming and would like food to eat, or just show up if you want to come and don’t want free pizza!

View Larger Map Get Directions View Bird's Eye

Ultimate Dev Workstation 2012

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:12:46 GMT

Being a dev machine that hadn't been reimaged in over a year or so, I was starting to have some issues with the current Win7 x64 image that I had on the machine I built in 2009. Since I was going to have to do a reinstall of the OS, I figured now was a good time to upgrade to a newer processor and motherboard, more RAM and a solid state drive.

Once I received all of the pieces and parts (we'll get to that part shortly), I found out that I also needed to upgrade the power supply as the one that came in the case I ended up getting after the original build post.

The case is the X-Navigator by APEVIA (pictured Right) and I sourced it from NewEgg.com for $94.99 at the time (out of stock as of this writing at NewEgg and Amazon doesn’t have this particular case listed).

The case has plenty of room for drives - 7 internal 3.5" drive bays with two 3 drive cages making it super simple to remove the drives without taking both sides of the case apart, two external 3.5" drive bays and four 5.25" drive bays.

It came with a 500W Power supply but did not have enough wattage for the new motherboard, not enough SATA power connectors and also lacked the additional ITX power connector. Of course I didn't realize this until I completely disassembled the original machine, had the new motherboard, processor and RAM installed. I ran out to my local BestBuy and picked up a 600W power supply from Thermaltake (pictured left). I paid $89.99 for the Thermaltake TR2 600W at BestBuy, however you can source it through Amazon for $59.09 as of this writing.

Four screws held the old power supply in the case and one zip tie had to be cut to release the leads that go from the power supply itself to the components in the case. Within 5 minutes, I had the old 500w unit out and the new 600w unit installed and its leads affixed to the top cross-brace that held the previous set of lead wires.

As for the processor, I decided to upgrade from the Intel Core 2 2.4ghz Quad core to the new AMD FX 8120 8-core proc running at 3.1ghz (pictured right). I paid Amazon $199.99 for it, but as of this writing, it is down to $189.99. I wanted to move up from 8gb to at least 16gb of RAM, so the motherboard choice would have to support that as well as the new processor.

The motherboard I ended up selecting was the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 (pictured left) for $146.99 at Amazon. I received rev 1.1 of the board from Amazon, which was the newest when I ordered in mid February 2012. Per Gigabyte's product page, there is now a revision 1.2 listed as well (mid March 2012). I chose this board since it has 4 memory slots to support up to 32gb of DDR3 RAM, 6 x SATA 6Gb/s internal connectors (Supports SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10 and JBOD), 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s connectors (Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1) on the back, Integrated Realtek ALC889 codec with 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel High Definition Audio and support for Dolby Home Theater and a S/PDIF Out connection, 4 x PCI Express x16 slots - 2 running at x16 and 2 running at x4, 2 x PCI Express x1 slots and 1 standard PCI slot, 8 rear USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports with another 6 USB 2.0 and 2 USB 3.0 ports available via headers on the motherboard. Other features not really important to me are the 2-Way AMD CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI support, but since this isn't a gaming or video editing rig, I don't really need a second video card.

Next came the decision for RAM. I'm normally a Kingston or Crucial guy, sure they're a little more, but I've never had DOAs from them, unlike some no-name brands, however after reading reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, I decided to go with 4x8GB sticks of DDR3 PC3-12800 RAM from Komputerbay, again via Amazon. Although they weren't eligible, the price ($210) was right, shipping was free and they were in stock, so I took a gamble. Everything else I ordered from Amazon was Prime Eligible, so I had no shipping costs on those items either.

I'm a big fan of large CPU coolers, so even though the AMD FX 8120 came with a sizable cooler as part of the package, I also ordered a Thermaltake SpinQ VT CPU Cooler (pictured left). While it set me back another $54.99, I had a Thermaltake 120mm cooling fan on my previous Intel proc to keep things nice and cool. I made the decision to run the stock AMD Cooler for a couple of weeks (now a month) to get some average CoreTemp data and then switch to the new Thermaltake cooler and see how much of a difference it makes. Look for a follow up post here in the near future with that comparison.

The last item in my upgrade parts list was to speed up my boot times. I had considered getting a Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB SATA3 hard drive, but after discussion with a few colleagues here at work and reading an article on Tom's Hardware comparing the speed differences of SATA 3 SSD drives, I decided to go with the Crucial m4 128gb SATA 6gb/s SSD drive (pictured right). I spent $163.17 for this unit, current price is $159.99. The price of this drive does fluctuate it seems +/- $20 on any given day, and there are mail-in rebates available from time to time as well.

After all the bits and pieces were upgraded, my performance score on the old rig of went from a score of 5.9 with the low score being the hard drive and the processor and RAM coming in at 7.1 and the graphics coming it at 6.9.

The new performance index is 6.8 - surprisingly down from 6.9 to 6.8. Strange that the video card score went down by .1, but I checked the BIOS and I don’t have the option to share any system memory with the video card, so not quite sure why that happened. EDIT: as it turns out, the system shared 3gb of memory anyhow, it just didn't show up when I was RDPed in and took the screen shot (notice the updated screen shot below), still at a loss as to why it is .1 lower.

I was tempted to upgrade my video card, but again this box is mainly for development, so unless I really need to, or just get the itch to up my perf score, I think my 1gb card will suffice for now.

On a much more positive note, you can see that the processors and RAM are up to 7.5 and the primary drive increased a whopping 1.8 points to 7.7!

The only thing I didn’t order, which I may end up adding is an IDE/SATA PCI card as I don’t currently have a channel to hook up my DVDR drive. I rarely use it, but I do have CDs/DVDs that I need to read on the rare occasion or a DVD that I need to burn here and there. You can pick those up for less than $50 most places.

So here's the full listing of all parts along with specific part numbers and links to Amazon where I purchased them. I strongly suggest you check out the prices on NewEgg.com and TigerDirect.com as well as they occasionally have free shipping and/or different rebates or package deals. Speaking of which, currently Amazon is offering a $10 off combo when you buy the AMD FX8120 with the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 motherboard through March 31, 2012.

		I paid
Thermaltake TR2 600W ATX12V V2.3 Core i7 Compliant Power Supply ATX		$89.99 + 5% VA Sales tax for a total of $94.49
AMD FX 8120 8-Core Processor 3.1 8 Socket AM3 - FD8120FRGUBOX		$199.99
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard		$146.99
Komputerbay 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz DIMM with Heatspreaders 240-Pin RAM Desktop Memory 9-9-9-24 XMP ready		$210.00
Spinq Vt Cpu Cooler		$54.99
Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2		$163.17
	TOTAL	$869.63

Getting a 404 error when trying to download/update Orchard packages from the Gallery?

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:12:34 GMT

If you're trying to download new or update installed packages/themes from the Orchard Gallery, you may receive the following error once you click the "Install" link:

The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found.

This doesn't really explain much, but it's because the feed moved a few months ago in November of 2011. The feed moved to:

[url]http://packages.orchardproject.net/FeedService.svc[/url]

To fix the error, log into the admin panel, go into Settings, Gallery then add the new feed (http://packages.orchardproject.net/FeedService.svc) and delete the original feed.

Do note, the feed URL is case sensitive, and is typed properly above

Gadgeteer MutliColorLED turns blue when you tell it to turn green??

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:12:26 GMT

I'm hacking on the Gadgeteer platform with my GHI Spider board and working with the MultiColorLED module (5 of them to be exact). I ran across an oddity when you call the .TurnBlue() method, the LED actually turns Green. When you call .TurnGreen(), the LED turns Blue. This behavior has been reported here and here.

As I mentioned before, I have 5 LEDs in my array, In the sample code below, If you only have one LED, change the first line from

 arrLED = new MulticolorLed[5] { led, led1, led2, led3, led4};

 arrLED = new MulticolorLed[1] { led};

If you have 2 LEDs, switch it to this:

 arrLED = new MulticolorLed[2] { led, led1};

Here's the demo code:

            arrLED = new MulticolorLed[5] { led, led1, led2, led3, led4};
 
            //All LEDs will turn Green            
            foreach (MulticolorLed myLED in arrLED)
            {
                myLED.TurnBlue();
            }
            Thread.Sleep(2000);
 
            //fix the blue/green issue on all leds
            foreach (MulticolorLed myLED in arrLED)
            {
                myLED.GreenBlueSwapped = true;
            }
 
            //All LEDs will now turn Blue    
 
            foreach (MulticolorLed myLED in arrLED)
            {
                 myLED.TurnBlue();
            }
 
            Thread.Sleep(2000);
 
            //All LEDs will now turn Off    
            foreach (MulticolorLed myLED in arrLED)
            {
                myLED.TurnOff();
            }

Office 2010 Guides and Natural Language Search Commands downloads

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:12:14 GMT

Like many other legal organizations, the firm I work for is undergoing an Office 2003 to Office 2010 upgrade now that most of the vendors that make complementary software to allow us to do massive document productions and generate documents for certain jurisdictions are Office 2010 compatible. One of our trainers found the Office 2010 ribbon guides that are an interactive quick reference that lets you click on "File, View, Header/Fooder" in Word 2003 for instance and then it will tell you where it has been moved to in Word 2010.

The online versions of these guides are somewhat easy to find, but the links on the associated pages point to the home page of the MS Office download site and force you to search for the downloads. Unless you put in the exact key words to find these guides, they are somewhat difficult to find, so I've captured the (current) links to the download pages.

There is also a Microsoft Labs plug-in called Search Commands for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that allows you to type in a natural langauge query such as "Where is the Header" and it will present several options as to which command you were looking for immediately to the right of the search box on the Search Commands ribbon tab.

The links for the various guides and Search Command plug-ins are below:

Search Commands: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28559

Ordered a few phones week before last..

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Picked up the following iMate phones: SPL, SP3 (I Finally got one!), SP5 and the Ultimate 9502.

Top: Nokia 770

Left to Right: iMate SP3, SP5, SPL, JAM, HTC Touch Enhanced, O2 XDA Trion, iMate Ultimate 9502, iPhone 3G

My collection now includes:

iMate
- JAM (128mb upgrade by PocketPcTechs.com)
- SPL
- SP3
- SP5
- Ultimate 9502 (photos) *For Sale*
HTC
- TyTn - O2 XDA Trion (photos) *For Sale*
- Elfin - Touch Enhanced - Red UK Version (photos) *For Sale*
Apple
- iPhone 3G
Nokia
- 6820
Sony Ericsson
- Ice Blue t39mc

Phones I've owned, but have sold:

HTC
- Elf - Touch
- Wizard - CIngular 8125
Arima
- o2 xda Flame
Sony Ericsson
- T300 (photos)

[Wisbar] - Creating notification icons/meters

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Since I picked up an O2 XDA Flame,I've been tinkering with skins lately on Wisbar - been almost forced to as there aren't that many VGA themes out there, mainly because the number of VGA devices aren't as high as the QVGA ones.

I've been customizing themes and posting mainly on the LakeRidge Forums about some of the things I've done and gotten a few questions about how to make signal/battery notifications. There's a great tutorial on the site (here), but something that people don't quite get when figuring out how the signal/battery images work is where/how you can tell the dynamic part of the image to end up. There's a column on the right of the image that tells Wisbar which palette color you used for the signal strength (or battery/memory usage). Based on the colors in those single pixels in the right hand column, wisbar drops in the appropriate indicator from your meter. You can put the pixels anywhere on the image - the right column just tells Wisbar what you're doing in the image. Make your image look however you want, and then based on the colors you put into the right most column, Wisbar will do the magic for you.

For instance - most signal meters look like this:
(each column is the color of the number)

            *
     * *
      * * *
     * * * *
* * * * *
0 1 2 3 4 5

Image would look like this:

So the next step could be something like this:
(each row is the color of the number)

5 * * * * *
4 * * * *
3    * * *
2 * *
1     *
0

Image would look like this:

So that's a simple example.. there's nothing to stop you from doing something like this:
(here each number is the color)

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 0
5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 0 0
5 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 0 0 0
5 4 3 2 2 2 2 0 0 0 0
5 4 3 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
5 4 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 4 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 4 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Image would look like this:

Hopefully that gives you a better idea of what you can do.

JAM vs. 8125 vs. trion

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Finally had the chance to shoot some side by sides of the three. You can check them out here.

Here's a preview:

My Trion is on the way...

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Direct from Deutschland, hopefully it will be here this week and I'll have time to play with the device a bit in addition to doing a Jam vs. 8125 vs. Trion review with pics. Stay tuned!

O2 XDA trion released in Germany

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

I really like the appearance of this device leaps and bounds above the early pictures of the TyTN.. the TyTN just doesn't look very "professional" to me..

There are also updated specs on the site as well if you click on the "HandyDetails" tab. Confirms the 400mhz profile, but I don't see anything about which one made it - Mini or Micro SD..

329.99 Euros (419 US) with 1 year contract, 699.99 euros (889 US) without any contract.
German link Translated to english

Windows Mobile API Usage Tool

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Microsoft just published the Windows Mobile API Usage Tool (Click here to go to the download page). This is development tool that requires Visual Studio 2005 or 2008.

Once you install the tool, you need to manually navigate to your Program Files directory to find the tool - it's command line only, no GUI. On my machine, the install went here to "C:\Program Files\Windows Mobile API Usage Tool" by default. Here is a screen shot of the folder listing:

To use the tool, you run WMAUT.EXE from the command line with a series of parameters, one of which is a path to an output database that you can run SQL statements against, and one is the CAB or MSI for your mobile app.

Here is a listing of the command line options:

I plan to run this tool on a few of the mobile applications that I have been working on and provide results and tips in blog posts in the future. Keep an eye out for those as part of the products I'm working on in my spare time.

Minor issues with the VGA/QVGA Vista portable skins

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

I'm running the PocketXP theme for WisbarAdvance, so my device normally looks like this:
[zoom]	[zoom]
I installed the VGA skin, as I thought my JAM is a VGA device, and noticed some weird issues with the buttons on the taskbar.
[zoom]	[zoom]
I headed over to the XcSkins forum . I found the thread for the Vista skin and posted a message. Did a little more digging and found this post. Sounds like someone else was having the same problem, and tried running the QVGA skin on her device. I tried copying the QVGA skin to my device and got these results:
[zoom]	[zoom]
I love the blue of the PocketXP skin, but I'm digging the vista skin. Now my device looks like this:
[zoom]	[zoom]

Vista Theme for Wisbar Advance

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Found an awesome theme pack that features a Vista feel. It's by xcilion who runs XCSkins. The theme is called Windows Vista Portable Edition. The skin is supported on both VGA and QVGA devices. This skinsuite isn't supported or licensed by Microsoft, and xcilion is quick to point that out in the skin information, but he does a great job of getting the feel and look down in my opinion.

If you would like more information, click here or on the image below. You can get the skins here or in the thread above.

AudioVox SMT 5600 for free at buy.com (or $225 without contract)

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

I came across this link today. You can get the SMT 5600 for $224.99, with $225 of mail-in rebates if you sign up for a new account with Cingular. Otherwise, you can save the extra $204.96 if you were planning on buying it from Expansys, who lists it for 429.95.

If I hadn't of picked up a JAM, I would be all over this. Halfway thinking of picking it up just to have a dev smartphone..

Cheers!

Tricking out your gadgets..

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Found this link on hackaday of some pretty decent paintjobs for gadgets.. I've seen a couple other sites that feature mods as well.. anyone done anything cool to their PocketPC or Smartphone?

JAM is on its way!

Tue, 15 May 2012 17:32:07 GMT

Thanks to a user of HowardForums whom had to give up his JAM, I was able to work out a deal and it should be here by the weekend. He also got the 128 MB upgrade from PocketPCTechs, so I'll have a good amount of on-board RAM, then plan to pick up a 1 or 2 gig SD card for my music. Sweetness.. I can't wait!

Steve Presley's views on mobile, wireless, embedded, CNC and .NET programming

Zenbot 12x16 CNC Intro photos and info

FBBC (GHI FBB Connectors)

Gadgeteer Mood Cube

Interested in a mobile / embedded developer user's group in Central Virginia?

Richmond Software CraftsmanShip Group on 3/29/12 - It's embedded development night!

Ultimate Dev Workstation 2012

Thermaltake TR2 600W ATX12V V2.3 Core i7 Compliant Power Supply ATX

AMD FX 8120 8-Core Processor 3.1 8 Socket AM3 - FD8120FRGUBOX

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Komputerbay 32GB (4x 8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 1600MHz DIMM with Heatspreaders 240-Pin RAM Desktop Memory 9-9-9-24 XMP ready

Spinq Vt Cpu Cooler

Crucial 128 GB m4 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive SATA 6Gb/s CT128M4SSD2

Getting a 404 error when trying to download/update Orchard packages from the Gallery?

Gadgeteer MutliColorLED turns blue when you tell it to turn green??

Office 2010 Guides and Natural Language Search Commands downloads

Ordered a few phones week before last..

[Wisbar] - Creating notification icons/meters

JAM vs. 8125 vs. trion

My Trion is on the way...

O2 XDA trion released in Germany

Windows Mobile API Usage Tool

Minor issues with the VGA/QVGA Vista portable skins

Vista Theme for Wisbar Advance

AudioVox SMT 5600 for free at buy.com (or $225 without contract)

Tricking out your gadgets..

JAM is on its way!