3d design for printing

I don't want to sound like an idiot.  I really don't.  I just lack the patience to learn Blender.  It's not just because the name of the application sounds like a dating app for some subculture of swinger.  It is because it operates in a very similar manner to the Adobe Creative Suite.  There are menus for every button, and there are shortcuts that look very similar to finishing moves in mortal combat just to do something simple like replicate a part.  So, I had to put that down and walk away.

The sad part is that my main desktop system is feeling some neglect since I dork around with my pi systems and containers, but I do not actually investigate minor issues with my main box.  I didn't remove Totem until last week.  I just kind of lived with the jerky garbage video until I wanted to watch something clearly.  This is a problem because I could not consistently get FreeCAD to work.  So, for me, it seemed like I couldn't use the 2 most popular 3d tools to build stuff to print.  Then I spoke to a coworker.

A little back story about my history with 3d printing.  I asked around for recommendations on a 3d printer for a few weeks before pulling the trigger.  Everyone owned a different brand and didn't talk about it really at all.  Then I asked the guy who runs a print shop out of his house.  He owns 5 of the same model Prusa.  I think I pulled the trigger within 3 days of hearing about his print shop.  So, I asked him with help on design for a beer tap handle.  He immediately told me to check out Tinker CAD.  Within 6 hours I had a prototype.  Within 2 days I had a working model.  By the end of the week I had a working model that was in use.

The only real aggregate:
Tinkercad

Of course, once that was finished, I had to make more stuff.  The nice thing is that you can upload directly to Thingiverse from the app.  The instructions were very basic and allowed an easy path to get straight into working.  I like to print a few prototypes prior to finalizing a model, but it works so much better than printing ingots of plastic when using Blender.  So far I've made tap handles and smart watch charging stations.  Next up, the case for the pi IR blaster/universal remote from my first blog.  I'm pretty happy now.

I may have mentioned it in another blog post, but it is also pretty cool that you can print tools like a micrometer.  That helped quite a bit in the design of the charging stations.

Holiday and presents

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I am an adult.  I went ahead and made a deal with Mrs. Claus this past Christmas and got a Mavic drone.  It came with a half dozen accessories, a few weren't too obvious about their usage.  A little box labeled "propeller fixed" was a weird one.  I thought it was for propeller repair.  I had to look up images of proper usage, and it turns out that it is for holding the propellers in place when you put it in the travel bag.  A decent use of plastic.  The other piece was unlabeled and looked like the type of plastic that holds something in place during shipping, but came with an adhesive piece of foam to keep it from damaging anything.  Turns out that it is for protecting the remote for the drone when you pack it up.

The whole experience has been a reminder that I didn't do enough research and should have thought a little more about what I was getting.  The drone is great, works better than expected.  But, I had also been putting money aside to buy the racing goggles.  The options looked great and I thought I would need the Ocusync Air system for long distance connectivity, so I bought the system with the goggles.  Turns out, those are for adding a camera that is able to be used with the goggles to another drone.  So, I will be building an arduino drone, maybe with a pi to track people or recognize hazards. 

The real fun part about having the system is that now I have to learn how to use it.  The goggles are actually able to be used for full control.  They are also a bit of a pain in the ass because the entire right hand side is a touch surface that can enter menus and change modes through taps and swipes.  But, I can move the camera gimbal based on head movement now.  I will probably update again in the near future with pictures of the wrecks. 

Drawback of Open Source

I'm a huge fan of open source projects.  Most of the software that I install at home is open source, and I have thrown some money at a few projects that I like.  My own preference on the matter is that there should be contributions made by companies that use open source.  I've identified a few things that bother me about the current state of funding open source, some of which I will become very hyperbolic about.

RedHat.  The enterprise standard.  Please stop trying to charge for every single feature.  We used to make fun of Microsoft about their licensing.  How much is it going to cost for me to run a virtual container environment with software defined storage?  What if I want to have a local patch repository and centralized management? I suppose I will need to pay for RHEV, Ansible, Ceph, RHEL, Satellite, OpenShift, Docker EE, and whatever else you can find in there.  Or I can spend a few minutes looking up alternatives and use the cost savings as a selling point to the C level.  Convoluted licensing for products that were free up until they became RedHat products is a bad path to go down.

Also, notice that the Docker EE license comes from Docker?  That will not be the case soon.  Because RedHat couldn't figure out a decent strategy to make more money off of it, the are fleshing out Buildah as a replacement for Docker.  It also looks OpenShift is going to be a full step away from Kubernetes.  It's almost as if the community creates a standard, and RedHat makes enough minor changes that it no longer works with the community.  Don't believe me, take a look at what port they use for VXLAN compared to what is defined in the RFC. 

But, RedHat is the easiest way to pay for enterprise open source software.

Aggregate 1:
Ready to drop Docker in RHEL

Aggregate 2:
Standards being fleshed out in 2017

While I was scanning through the news one morning, I saw something relevant to my interests.  How to pay for open source projects.  This should be a no-brainer, just hit the donate tab on their website.  That's generally not how it works in corporate environments. The article sounded like a nightmare scenario for any admin.  Let another company scan your systems for open source software, and you pay the open source developers to keep your projects up to date.  Yeah, no thanks.  It is still a step in the right direction.  It does offer a method of payment from corporate customers, and it can make sure that critical software stays up to date.  But, if the dev team has heavily modified the software, then there is potential that it is not something that they want patched or changed at all.  It could be a part of a whole new application that the company does not want to rebuild every time some code change happens in the underlying technology. 

Aggregate 3:
A good start

So, the ideal solution in my mind is to find a way to pay for open source, reduce risk by holding the scanning tools, and being able to have a line item method of paying for mandatory components.  While I do not believe that Tidelift is 100% there, I think they are the closest to what is needed.  And, if enough customers agree on what is the correct approach, I'm sure Tidelift will create a policy based on that.  And no, I am not paid by them.  If you're looking to ditch some of the RedHat licensing and want to make sure that you can maintain support, I'd look into Tidelift.

Aggregate 4:
Pretty neat 

Yammering about 3d printing

I'm not going to pretend to be an artist.  I did get some toys so I can try, but I decided to start off much simpler.  My very first blog post was about building a home made IR blaster that integrates with AWS to make a voice controlled remote.  To completely finish that project, I tried to make a case for the project.  I now have a lovely ingot of PLA.  Not a big problem, it just reinforces that I have to learn more about the 3d design tools available.  Something I have not really had much incentive to do before now.  Which is kind of funny considering how often I seek out the design panels at different conferences.

About a decade ago I went to a conference that had a speaker connect his system to the projector and build out a skull in roughly 30 seconds, then drop it down some stairs by applying gravity to his design.  I think it was around the same time that the open source nerds were all freaking out about the release of Big Buck Bunny, a video made using only open source software.  They kind of missed the mark, making some of the creatures and themes too violent, dark, or deranged for small children.  I'm not trying to be as good as the 30 second skull guy or the Big Buck Bunny crew, but it would be nice if I could figure out the application well enough to make a box with a hole in it.

Adding injury to ignorance, I also tried a fun trick from my 3d printer manufacturer.  Soldering extra long pins to a pi zero w and adding it directly to the controller.  Within about a week I had realized that the system wasn't operating properly anymore.  I took the pi out and went back to a pi 3.  The system then degraded further and further until I found the root cause.  I had tangled a wire that led to the heated bed of the printer.  It caused a temperature failure for about 75% of my prints.  Once I resolved that, I realized that I could put the pi back into the controller box.  But I had a backlog of things I wanted to print, so it has to wait until after I get caught up. 

The most recent Chrome update has resulted in Octoprint being unable to preview the print with the GCode viewer.  I have found that it still works fine with Firefox.  I suspect that there is a memory leak somewhere, since my system will fail to come out of sleep mode when I leave Octoprint up on Firefox.  A minor annoyance since I use Chrome for everything.

I would have to say that my minor gripes are pretty funny.  I have to learn how to use an application that has been around for 2 decades.  I don't have time to upgrade my toy because I'm still playing with it.  I now have an increased workload because I have found more toys to make.  I have to use a different browser sometimes.  Meanwhile, Amazon and Prusa have created inexpensive filament that works well.  There are new attachments to make multi-color prints with dissolving supports.  I can make better toys for less money.  I just need to finish making my Halloween napkin rings so I can get started on Thanksgiving decorations.

High speed internet

Another upgrade in my neighborhood.  I got word about gigabit internet being available in my neighborhood and jumped at the chance.  I've noticed that while I have gigabit, it isn't as big of an upgrade as expected.  Downloading install disks for different operating systems still takes about as long as it did on 150 down.  What I did notice is that patching my own systems happens at lightning speed.  I think I was able to get a torrent of Ubuntu down in a few minutes.  Much like the old meme about coffee, I can do dumb things faster.  Pretty happy about it.

3d Printer

I've been slacking on updating for a few weeks.  I got a 3d printer.  After going through a few weeks of "Print all the things", I've settled back down.  I've had a few fun things to add about my printer, and the work I plan on doing with it.  Let me put you to sleep with my geek out.

I had a few discussions with coworkers and in forums about which printer to purchase.  There are a ton of options, all of which carry their own pros and cons.  One coworker owns 3 different printers, each are in the sub 500$ range.  One of them requires expensive proprietary filament.  Another coworker owns 4 of the exact same model that run 24/7 for an Etsy shop.  That sounded like the kind of machine I wanted.  I ended up buying a Prusa Mk3 that I put together myself.  It took roughly 8 hours to build it, and one part of the filament loading assembly snapped and had to be torched back together.  It did not break in a way that would risk a re-break from torching it, so I just rolled on, but be warned that it is a possibility to break a part when building.

The SD card that came with it had a bunch of stuff you can print immediately, so I went big with a dragon, then an offensive octopus, and eventually everyones favorite boat Benchy.  I connected to my desktop with a USB cable, then patched my desktop and rebooted.  That caused the printer to stop, which forced a reprint of the dragon.

I had some trouble with a few random things like boomerangs, and downloaded a ton of editing software and printing software.  There was one thing that confused me in all of this.  Prusa has a version of Slic3r made with their print settings already in there as a default.  You can also add a pi zero w to the controller on the printer to make it a wireless 3d printer with Octoprint.  But Octoprint can import your profile from Cura, not Slic3r.  Just a weird thing I noticed while messing with stuff. 

I also ran into a problem that I have stopped messing with.  Adding the pi to the controller.  I'm sure I could have resolved the issue with some electric tape and patience, but opening the controller box and dorking around in it took a few zip ties and 4 screws being removed and replaced every time I messed with it, so I decided not to risk messing anything up.  It seemed like the USB on the pi was coming in contact with the soldering of the heated bed, and I kept getting heated bed issues while the pi was in it.  Went with my new 3b pi and have been happy to give a full sized pi some purpose at home. 

Speaking of pi with purpose, I was able to print a case for my pi with the Matrix hat, finally.  And for my pi camera with IR bulbs, finally.  I made some wall mounts for echo dots, toys for my kids, and a really cool storm trooper pen holder for my tablet stylus.  Which leads me into another gripe.  Everyone wants to have the best tools they can get.  I got a Wacom tablet that is not in the kernel being released with Ubuntu 18.04, yet.  I messed around with Bluetooth settings to get support for my on-board card, but the tablet is only recognized when connected through USB.  Which makes designing parts fun.  It was described in another blog that using a mouse in Blender is like using a pencil that you are holding with chopsticks, so I really can't wait to be able to use my tablet.

There's a fun learning curve with the printer.  Clean it often, if things slip on the printing plate after cleaning use painters tape, some objects just won't print until you mess with them a lot in different software.  There's a not fun learning curve with Blender.  That application is up there with GIMP and Photoshop CS for functionality.  There are endless permutations to get the software to do what you want, which means that there are endless methods to screw up what you are creating.  I was trying to build my own case for the first thing I blogged about, the IR blaster.  I now have an ingot made of filament.  Practice makes perfect, so I will keep updating my progress on building my own stuff.  It can be very frustrating when you print Link from Legend of Zelda in such high quality and detail that you can see belt holes in a wrist strap, then you print your own work and it is basically a brick of melted plastic.  At least it was geometric. 

Your AI blog is old and my code is running on the wrong cores

Digging around into stuff like TensorFlow, you might come across some statements similar to "the idea has existed since the 80's, but the technology wasn't fast enough".  There are certainly drawings that can make that case, and probably some code examples.  What is frustrating right now is that the hardware is finally fast enough, and the code is maturing quickly.  That means that what was true two years ago is not true today. 

I am most certainly not blaming the bloggers on this.  I have a blog about creating an Alexa skill that can still be loosely followed today, but the Alexa skill website is completely different from when I wrote that blog.  I'm pretty sure that there was a significant difference in the video requirements for security cameras to the Amazon Show and Spot since I wrote my camera blogs.  You may not even need to create your own RTSP revers proxy in order to display them on your Fire TV anymore.

What I am having a problem with is the lack of decent blogs from the industry.  Hands down, the best industry blog I have ever read has been William Lam with VirtuallyGhetto.  Proof of knowledge and deep understanding from someone who responds to legitimate questions.  That is how the industry needs to do this.  Meanwhile, Amazon blogs about building cloud applications to cloud developers, but nothing for a tech savvy hobbyist. 

Aggregate 1:
Virtually Ghetto

I don't want to complain about the lack of knowledge coming from the industry, the only people qualified to write about it are much better versed on it.  I just wish they had some new guys that they could throw into the fire and distill the information.  Especially Amazon and Nvidia.  Amazon offers free cloud services that I use to turn on a TV in my house.  Nvidia is the back-end hardware for my AI containers.  So, when I see a blog that is incredibly well written from under a year ago, I trust the information a little too much.  But it was also one of the top results in Google search.

Aggregate 2:
Very well written blog

Unfortunately Nvidia has come out with version 2.  Some of the other containers in that blog are not up to date either.  They are from late 2017, and were probably put out as a single working release before the author/developer got too busy.  This is where the industry needs to step in.  The blog should be up to date from the company, the containers should be from the the company, and the instructions should be clear.  Considering how simple the instructions for install are, it is a disgraceful failure on their part that they do not have up to date documentation, especially for a company that charges for concurrent use of a GRID GPU on top of the 8k$ price tag to buy the damned thing.  They have the money and resources.

So, next blog I write will bhave the date listed at least twice, give specific instructions for a basic build on specific software, and will probably have multiple links back to Nvidia with offensive tags on the links.