Angel's Island Beach, San Francisco BayAngel's Island Beach, San Francisco Bay
Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:38:24 -0400

Angel's Island is this kickass, sort of deserted island with a mysterious past. Its in the middle of the SF bay, you have to take a ferry out to it, and they only have 9 primitive campsites (well, 10 if you count the kayak only campsite).
After the day tourists leave, you're basically the only one on the island and its really rad and spooky with all the abandoned army / immigration buildings that are in various states of decay.
Plus, theres an old missile silo on the island. So. Rad.
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken, Jen Dunlap
Arduino on atmega644Arduino on atmega644
Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:21:49 -0400

We did it! Arduino is fully ported to the atmega644: bootloader and core libraries both work great. I have a prototype board in production right now, and we just need to hash out the collaboration details with the Arduino core team. Once that is done, you'll be able to get your hands on an awesome, cheap, and powerful Arduino compatible board.
Yay!
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
RRRF LogoRRRF Logo
Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:01:57 -0400

My new friend online, Jordan Miller, has been doing a series of renderings in Blender of a RRRF.org logo. They look awesome and I wanted to share them with you.
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
Atmega644 is alive!Atmega644 is alive!
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:59:16 -0400

I'm in the process of porting the Arduino environment to the atmega644 for a skunkworks project I'm working on. This chip is awesome because it has 4x the flash (64k vs 16k) it has 4x the RAM (4k vs 1k) and 12 more I/O pins (32 vs 20)
Its the biggest and baddest atmel chip that has a DIP version that I could find.
Here is a video of my first major success where I wrote and uploaded an Arduino sketch to it.
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
Segment Pausing FixSegment Pausing Fix
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:09:52 -0400

One of the nice side benefits of our recent work into having the host output GCode, and having the Arduino process that GCode is that we can reduce the delay between line segments by buffering GCode to the Arduino.
Here's a video demonstrating the movement.
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
RepRap Print TimelapseRepRap Print Timelapse
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:02:03 -0500

My first 'real' shot at printing something. I dont quite have all the parameters perfected yet, so the print doesnt come out quite as I had hoped, but its a beginning.
Also, this is 2 separate prints rolled into one. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to film this and hopefully the next ones will be better. I'd love to mount the camera on the extruder itself =)
reprap.org
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
NYC Resistor TimelapseNYC Resistor Timelapse
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:55:06 -0500

My first 'real' weekend at the NYC Resistor space. I spent it building a new robot for a friend while the other peeps started work on the loft in the background.
ps. sorry about the nickelback... its all i had ;)
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
New Camera!New Camera!
Sat, 23 Feb 2008 10:56:16 -0500

I got the Canon SD 750 on Blake's suggestion. Mostly because i needed a camera that can do timelapse. This rocks so hard. Be on the lookout for many timelapse videos to come.
YAY!
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
Its Alive!!!Its Alive!!!
Sat, 10 Nov 2007 19:59:03 -0500

Here is my robot up and running... on all 3 axes!!!
Now I just have to write the code to let it talk to the RepRap host software and I'll be able to start doing test prints.
Woooo hoooo!!!
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
Crazy Stepper on Stepper ActionCrazy Stepper on Stepper Action
Tue, 06 Nov 2007 09:26:16 -0500

My stepper motors have 200 steps in one revolution, that is: You need to send them 200 'pulses' at a regular interval for them to rotate smoothly.
There are two ways to do this in software:
1. send a pulse, wait X microseconds, send next pulse. this is blocking, meaning you cant do anything else because all your time is spent waiting.
2. check to see if its time to send a pulse, and send it if you can. if you can, then step, note the time, and continue. this is non blocking, because you aren't waiting... you're just regularly checking. this means you can do things in the background, or control multiple motors. its also sort of tricky.
in this video, i finally got my non-blocking stepper code working!!!
more here: make.rrrf.org/smd-1.0
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
PWM Driver BoardPWM Driver Board
Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:04:50 -0400

So in the past month I've been designing some new boards for RepRap. Here is an assembled and working one. This one is designed to drive stuff like fans, one-way motors, heaters, etc.
It has pretty indicator LED's and can drive some serious power to those outputs (up to 5 amps!!!)
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
Laser Cutting PartsLaser Cutting Parts
Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:01:41 -0400

A friend of a friend (and hopefully soon friend) has a laser cutter, and so Bre wanted to get his parts for his RepRap cut. He talked Phil into letting us do it for free if we bring our own materials to cut. Here's a little video
(its laser cutting in the background.)
lasers are so lazer.
Cast: Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken
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