LesHall

Two Hearts from me, thank you Edge! And... good start ultiarjan, you're ahead of me! Les Make history!

OK so I got to working on the wrist-mountable portion of this project and I downloaded a customizable stretchy bracelet from Thingiverse (YouMagine only had one that required NinjaFlex and I havent bought any 2.85mm ninjaflex yet; being an Ultimaker user now, I am breaking my Thingiverse habit and tending toward YouMagine). The goal is to attach the whole thing together as one piece with stretchy bracelet holding it on the wrist. So yeah I got to working on that and I'm printing out some test stretchies, and I go into hte #ultimake chat and talk with someone. This someone asks me questions that basically lead me to the idea that I could use some of my extra ESP266 chips to perform network scans just like this wrist wearable with the goal of trilaterating the mobile phones around my room! This with a little bit of software on the computer could plot the locations over time so that I would have a record of people outside my room listening (and be aware of that) as well as evicence of them entering my room! Anyway, paranoia aside, It is a fun idea to track wifi with IoT chips like that, so I am already making plans for a second "Maker Game" project on the trilateration device installation. Wish me luck! Les Make history!

I see what you did there! It was with me, I made some progress on two projects and interacted with some nice people, some not so nice but what ya gonna do? I started out thinking of teaching a class on building a WiFi scanner then someone sort of led me to the realization that I could make a WiFi locator - even better! And I have all or most of the hardware to do it

Hey all, guess what? You are invited to be an early participant in a game of Making things. The very nature of the game is forming now just with myself communicating with some friends. It's kind of more of a virtual makerspace than a game, though the goal is to emphasize a larger picture that is very fun. In this game each of us is Mentor or Student and we can all be Mentors of things we are good at doing as well as Students of Mentors who are expert in the doing of some thing. For example, the thing I'd like to do first is be a Mentor to Students who would like to build a wearable IoT WiFi scanner. This is a thing I created some time ago using a wifi chip on a breakout board and some example software for starters. Probably the best thing is for me to be the first Mentor and see how it goes. We can shape the form of the "game" via online participation. In fact, we can use the Ultimaker communication resources - the forum and the chat - as our comm platform. Here is a photo I took of me being all excited about having built my first version of the scanner. I took it out to the front of the building and it kept picking up new devices and dropping them on the next scan, I figure it was the cell phones in the cars that were driving by, perhaps? Not sure as I am no expert on the subject. At any rate, it's an interesting project and you can plan your own implementation of the wearable and write your own software from the examples. I'll even make a badge and provide the badge file to you upon successful completion of the project. Oh yes, we will have Show and Tell at the end of the project. So if you want to build your own WiFi Scanner along with me building my second one and teaching you in the process, just reply to this thread voicing your input. Thanks. Les Make history!

I feel flustered! I printed the robot at two different sizes and tried different ways (wire, screws, and cotter pin) to mount the legs. I don't have long enough screws in my hardware collection to mount both legs with one screw. At this point I will need a little while to chill out and see how things improve, and I would like to make the suggestion that we make a robot that works and does not require hardware. After all, print in place is one of our talents. I can see the feet on the bed, the body supported to waist height, and bridging creating mounts for the legs. I have done this type of thing before with good success. Les Make history!

What a clever fix to wash it with acetone! How long has it been watertight now? Yeah that struck me as pretty nifty too!

I have printed two robots now and neither walks. The larger one I printed in PLA with 100% infill to give it some weight, the smaller with 20% infill, it is very light. I don't know which direction to point the feet and I don't have any M2 hardware to use, so I have wire. No way to keep the legs apart. what am I doing wrong?

Oh, what the heck! I cannot resist a good contest, and now that I understand it better I'm in! I printed the robot and use a piece of 22 Gauge wire to join them at the shoulder where the legs meet. It won't walk. The robot is printed in PLA which is very smooth and I've only tested it on smooth surfaces, so it's just not moving or skittering away. I do have some nuts and bolts (stop that grimmacing) in one of those 1.001 pieces kits from Harbor Frieght, but I don't think I have M2. M3 yes but not long enough anyway. Therefore wire. Why won't he walk? Les

OK, I'm going to begin with the notion that you understand a bit about us at e-NABLE and what we do. If you're not familiar with e-NABLE then I suggest you go to this website where you can get up to speed and even get involved if you feel so motivated. This topic is laser-beam focused on one category of e-NABLE which is the addition of electronics to the hands as part of the "Phone Home" effort. Other electronics efforts do exist as well, this is the one I started and several people have made contributions along the way". So what is "Phone Home"? Isn't that what the alien who crash landed on Earth said he needed to do in the movie E.T.? Yep, he had to build a radio transmitter or some such gizmo in his technology to send a message back to his home planet as to where he was so they could save him from the sickness he was developing by being on Earth. In the same sense, minus the sickness bit, our mission with the Phone Home project is to send messages via the internet from the prosthetic device back to the cloud server at e-NABLE. When I had some success playing with the amazing and game-changing chips called ESP8266, designed in China for IoT (Internet of Things) use, I was excited for sure! I had done very little internet programming and here, by following Adafruit tutorials and using Adafruit software on the Adafruit hardware that I had purchased (did I say Adafruit enought times? OK, you get the picture, this project relies heavily on Adafruit at least in it's current form), I managed to get an actual chip by itself to communicate with my phone via website interactions. Like wow man that's techie stuff! So being all excited and trying to imagine ways that I could show and tell it with my friends, I naturally went to the e-NABLE google group and showed a photo of myself holding my phone and the bulky but functional wrist wearable device I had constructed to do local network scans. It was not yet an e-NABLE project but was about to become one. It occurred to me to add a comment that if we put these things on e-NABLE prosthetics, they could "Phone Home" with their usage data, to tell us how much the prosthetic is used, or mainly if it were still used at all over the passing of time. The response was very supportive of continuing R&D exploration in that direction! This I found very exciting so I said I would work further on the project which I have done, off and on, for the past six months since I think around November of 2015 I think maybe? Or thereabouts. Anyway, I have not worked on it much lately and I think another e-NABLE volunteer has made some progress since my latest progress, and I need to catch up with him, Ro Ortiz who is like a super monstrously amazing e-NABLE engineer in my book. More on Ro and his contribution later, let's wrap up this post and I'll get back to telling more of the tale of Phone Home, e-NABLE style soon enough! Your comments, questions, and really any positive input you have to contribute are quite welcome! Les Make history!

Lol skint, let me explain. e-NABLE .... (^.^)~ mew haha Les, the e-NABLE bit I do understand...its all that techy electronic language you speak that bamboozles me lol OK skint, I'm going to explain it in more non-electronics-expert terms over in "what have you made" as per Sander's suggestion. You can find the convo there in a jiffy. Les Make history!

Sure, I can share technical details especially related to the 3D printing aspects of the work, but also the electronics and software that I am stumbling to create. It's not just me either, several people are helping out, most notably Ro Ortiz who is sort of the keeper of e-NABLE's web programming. Maybe it might inspire some folks into helping out? Where should I post it?

Yes that was very helpful, Robert! I especially liked the bit at the end about saving and loading profiles!

Oh maybe that was the problem, it wasn't dry yet.

I feel so "stoopid"! I read somewhere during my initial familiarization with my brand spankin' new Ultimaker 2+ (yay) that with a heated bed, PLA does not require glue to get good adhesion while printing and good release when done. I tried this for a while and all was good, then for some goofy-dumb reason I thought "well, I'll just add some glue", thinking it would hold even better. That's where I went wrong, because I was printing Loubie's Aria Dragon (with wider proportions, just my preference) and the early stage of the print lost adhesion to the bed and just got some stringy deposits on it. Not knowing how to diagnose the problem, i exacerbated it by adding EVEN MORE GLUE (extra duh on top) which produced the same problem EVEN EARLIER in the printing on the second try. It was only when I felt the bed and realized that the glue was cooked dry by the heat of the bed that I realized my dilemma. So I cleaned the bed and did not apply glue and so far, knock on wood, the print is flawless! So lessons learned eh? Les Make history!

Greetings kelechi, it is with a happy heart that I greet you! I have been wanting to establish communications with someone in Africa for charity purposes. I volunteer at two places, one of which is all about making clean water for people who need it. To that end we have developed two methods of cleaning water and are working on more as well. I am hoping to establish an outlet for our technologies that involves a 3D printer located in Africa. If you are interested in running off a few simple prints with the possibility of helping people clean their water supply, please reply in this thread or contact me via email (deltamodulator(at)gmail(dot)com). Les Make history!

Lol skint, let me explain. e-NABLE is that charitable organization that makes the plastic hands for kids (and adults) who have upper limb differences such as the birth defect that causes 1 in 20,000 kids to have no fingers on one hand. They grow up shy about their limb difference due to teasing from other kids, but when they get an e-NABLE hand - for free - t;hey become temporarily the coolest kid on the block - what's cooler than a robotic hand for a kid? Well I do R&D as an e-NABLE volunteer, and my thing is adding electronics to the hands. The latest thing is adding IoT so the hands can "Phone Home" with usage data as well as communicate with each other and with peripheral devices. I was just in a great mood because I got the hand's electronics talking with the server's MQTT (pronounced "mosquito") messaging protocol. Such things are a mystery to me, networking and communications, so I was elated to have gotten it to work. So now you know what I was on about! Les Make history! p.s. I am further elated by my Ultimaker 2+ printer, it's truly the cat's meow! (^.^)~ mew

Sander, please see this link for a chess monster print.

I have noticed that Cura strangely does not set the temperature of the bed or the print head. The material selection on the LCD does that. It kind of makes sense in a way, this lets you switch materials without changing the gcode file. My question then becomes how do I set up new materials, cause as you know there's a heap big bunch of them out there, each with their own recommended bed and nozzle temperature. Is it in the menu somewhere? Les Make history!

OK, I was told that printing with solder and other low temp metals is not practical because it sticks to the brass nozzle and would melt the PTFE feeding tube. OK, so about the nozzle - my buddy Matthew at printed solid sells hardened steel nozzles for dealing with abrasive filaments, can those nozzles be used? And the feeding tube, why can't that be made of similar material. I know it may be a stretch, and greater, more familiar minds than mine have thought of this, so what is the reason we don't just use an all steel or all aluminum for that matter hotend and print with solder? Please educate me on this one. Thanks, Les Hall Make history!

Hi Sander, I can see your concept as one in a series of "Maker Gamer" Competitions. You use a standard numbering system of the value of each piece (pawn=1, knight=3, bishop=3, rook=5, queen=9, king=infinity). You assemble your pieces into one or more than one mega-piece(s). Capabilities combine like rook legs give you XY motion, bishop legs give you diagonal motion. Similarly arms give you the attack modes of the pieces employed. You must 3D print your monstrosities prior to playing the game(s), which are a series of best 2 out of 3 or so, so that you get a bit of gameplay. Experienced gamers will have collections of combinations ready-print to employ for impromptu games. Software versions of the game exist. It's a chess variant, Maker style! I'll trade you that envisionment for another of my own. "Maker Wearables Game" is where you create wearable computing, sensing, and actuating hardware, share the plans to gain teamwork points, and use your built hardware and software in your life environment for game points. Beginning with simple WiFi scanners (one that I built before), moving on to internet broadcasting cameras, heartbeat monitors (of both yourself and, thru infrared, others). Night vision, and getting really fancy to motorized boots/skates, rain deployable umbrellas, who knows where it could go. Your mission is to create new technology and share it with the hive mind. In fact, maybe that's the name of the game: Maker Hive Mind! Les Make history!

I used to be quite the Quake fan, played a Demo Man in the Team Fortress mod, which I gather is it's own game now. Rightly so, it was a lot of fun. I have lost touch with the gaming world, though I would like to create a game. The game would have a chat component of some sort for communications between players, a 3D printing component so you would actually print stuff to be part of the game, and of course a computing component, possibly an electronics and software involvement. So basically a team-based Maker thing of sorts. I don't have much of a specific feel for how the game would actually materialize, just I like to do those things and I figure other people would also.

Hi Sander, I guess you want to reward both persistence and merit so that if someone keeps on trying but never seems to quite make the grade, that is it's own rewarding category. Then categories for the various themes of merit, as voted up by the membership. Maybe propose an initial list and ask people to prune / expand the list. Ultimaker specific categories should be included but not take up too many slots so that people with other printers are welcome. Then it's a matter of judging which as you mention can be community based. There can be short term as well as long term rewards, or perhaps once a week and a vote-off monthly maybe. Then once a year there could be an annual competition including both voting of previous winners to become the annual super-winner of each category and a meta-competition. The annual process and results can be written up by those among us who are writers into a presentation for consumption by those outside of Ultimaker forums as an annual "Best of Ultimaker" type thing. Make that annual thing a celebration and actually you know what? Rather than have the celebration later, let's kick the whole thing off with the first annual montly competition because there's never a reason to delay a party / celebration! It can be in July for Christmas in July and Independence Day as borrowed from our USA members and recognized globally as a celebration of freedom, how's that? Les Make history!

It is with all the excitement of a child being praised by parents that I write you about having my 3D print featured. It could be thought of as a small honor with a 10% to 20% chance of being selected from recent peer work, but it sure makes me feel good. With the photo displayed so prominently in the banner, it's like I got three gold stars from the teacher for my essay on 3D printers, lol. Add to that the fact that, at 49 years young, I am in my second childhood right now. I really believe that this and the contest being run, and other types of modest rewards help keep people excited about 3D printing. How about more such selections in areas like most practical, most imaginative, most meaningful, most medical, etc. each month? Just an idea! Les Make history!