Back in 2008, I wrote some software for fun to generate various optimized walking mechanisms. And when I also picked up some electronics and wood working skills in more recent years, I was able to turn one of these mechanisms into an actual wireless walking wooden coffee table: the Carpentopod. This post briefly covers this project from start to end.
Explanation and demonstration video on how the WS2811 chip can be wired and programmed to light a miniature building or even a whole day/night sky dome. Includes schematics, Python and Arduino code.
With some hardware and software tinkering and time, it’s possible to turn a Nunchuck into a completely stand-alone wireless (PC) joystick. In this post, I’ll briefly go over how I achieved this, as well as share the open-source software and hardware resources I developed along the way.
My 3020 CNC was a nice introduction into CNC, but it also did leave much to be desired. Especially when it comes to working with harder/thicker wood or even metals. So the time has come to get a more powerful machine: A solid all-metal 3040 CNC from China…
As my 3020 CNC is inside in my home, I prefer it to run as quietly and as clean as possible. That’s why I’ve built an enclosure large enough to fit in both the CNC and a small vacuum cleaner. The enclosure is made out of 18 mm MDF panels because they’re relatively cheap. After the build, …
Auto leveling is key to precise PCB milling. I wrote some open-source software that makes it possible to do auto-leveling on a CNC USB Controller-based machine like my chinese 3020 CNC. This software controls the actual control software so that it starts probing a circuit board in a grid-like manner, after which it can compensate for any misalignment and curvature in the GCode.
Discusses the limitations of my 3020 CNC machine as well as some of the ways to work around them, allowing me to successfully mill things like LEGO-compatible bricks and circuit boards.
Last year, I bought my first CNC machine for about €400: A brandless “3020 CNC” from AliExpress. It’s great to be able to CNC from the comfort of your home, but took a bit of effort to get it to work properly though…
Since 2017, I’ve picked up an interest in building software-controlled electronics and CNC machining. This has been lot of fun for me, but it also has been daunting at times, being a total newcomer. Luckily, I’ve always been able to find useful information online, provided openly and voluntarily by the maker’s community. So I thought I’d contribute back to this community by sharing some of my experiences, ideas and tools in the other posts in this new ‘Maker’ section.
A new technique is introduced that can do Catmull-Rom interpolation in 2D using only four bilinear samples instead of 16 fetches. This is made possible by preprocessing the input data using a specific sign-flipping scheme, and modifying the interpolation weights and locations accordingly.