aren-of-the-fen

[aren-of-the-fen]

Project: Patreon Panel

Original scope of project: Create computer that can display an auto-refreshing live feed of current Patrons in various tiers on Patreon as a way to thank members for their support and recognize their support. Technical elements: A computer connected to a monitor that can connect to the internet and display an automatically refreshing webpage. Cabling for internet, power for computer and monitor. Technical hurdle: donor PCs are in sore shape, having been picked over and cannibalized. Building working machines at this point is more about isolating and replacing damaged, malfunctioning, or missing elements to construct working machines from the scrapyard. Ben suggested the use of a Raspberry Pi, which is an excellent idea. One concern I had was that the PC would have to have ‘space’ allotted for it. Using an RPi means this project can exist more or less in the space taken by the monitor itself. A monitor candidate was identified. Temporarily using one of my own RPi3′s and an SD card left over from the arcade project, I was able to get the RPi up and running with Raspbian Linux, though temporarily I had to use one of the HDMI-to-VGA adapters from the arcades, and one of my own power supplies. I have taken the machine and monitor home to work on it over the next few days. Located and installed Teamviewer on the Raspberry Pi, which will allow me to remote-manage the machine from home. Assigned the machine to my secondary Teamviewer account (which the Kiosk is also assigned to). Next items, finding out how to rotate the display to portrait on Raspbian. Attempting to configure Raspian’s Chromium browser to display a page fullscreen, with no browser chrome, on startup. Also attempting to solve the DVI/VGA bootup bug again. Longer term items: Creating the HTML and CSS to display the data, possibly requiring some other ‘fancy’ elements like auto-scrolling lists or something. Not sure how this is done in a post-flash WWW. 📌✂ Edit -- Monitor rotation was easy

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

display_rotate=3    (270 degrees)

Set the taskbar to ‘bottom’ of the screen, then told it to auto-hide and be 0px tall when hidden. 

Note: The Lenovo rectangular monitors have a terrible viewing angle in portrait mode. Might have to resort to Landscape. 🙁

📌✂ Edit -- After some effort, I was finally able to find how to autolaunch chromium, in fullscreen mode, after startup.

sudo nano /etc/xdg/autostart/Launch-Patreon-Display.desktop

Containing the following code.

[Desktop Entry] Type=Application Name=Launch Patreon Display Comment=Starts Chromium in fullscreen and autoloads patreon page NoDisplay=false Exec=chromium-browser --start-fullscreen https://www.eugenemakerspace.com NotShownIn=GNOME;KDE;XFCE;

💡 Hints for tomorrow:

How to do a Marquee with CSS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsrsSiYueTk Use Google webfonts. Let’s try hand-coding the HTML/CSS, just because. Honestly, we’re looking at a black screen, some white text, maybe a few small graphics. This shouldn’t be hard. http://listofrandomnames.com https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/c/cursor/ https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_html_include.asp

📌✂ Edit -- Saturday. After some more work on the setup, I was able to implement the scrolling ‘credits crawl’ of names rolling up the screen. The results were really sweet. Ben came by with the donor Pi, and I tried switching over. It’s just not capabe of rendering the screen updates fast enough. Even my Pi3 had some artifacting when rendering the text moving along the screen, but this was just, jarring. Ben added the ability to ping the server and get back a list of names in the given tiers, but we had a devil of a time finding a way to get the resulting text to show up on the locally stored webpage. In the end we opted for an hourly cron job that will grab the desired lists of names, and store them on the Pi where they can be accessed and displayed. The credits crawl issue is a big one, nearly a deal-breaker. But looking at the options of a) building a linux PC and starting over from near scratch, or b) finding a way to make it work, I’m willing to give option b a shot. Idea moving forward is to shift to old-school powerpoint style information display. Page loads, displays for several seconds, then the next page loads. If the pages are stored on the machine itself, and if the CSS remains the same from page to page, there shouldn’t be any ‘blinking’ or ‘flashing’ between pageloads. This will allow for better implementation of sponsor logos, which would be super cool, but it adds issues of having to be ‘maintained’. Should the membership list grow too long (for example) the font sizes will need to be adjusted, or we may need to add multiple pages to list people in a single group. Should that list shrink again too much, the display would need to be updated again. It’s not hard work, and I can definitely leave room for some growth as I lay it out, but it’s something to think about. Also, with powerpoint presentations, you have the option of transitions between pages. Even something as simple as a fade to black between pages will be just as taxing on the Pi as the scrolling was/is. Click, Click, Click... it’s going to be a bit ‘Public Access TV’.. but perhaps I can make it decent. I just wish I could have static elements between pages, like a logo that doesn’t move while other things do... but that would result in burn-in, and honestly, it’s not necessary. Hiding the cursor was super easy tho.

[aren-of-the-fen]

Baby steps

Last night at the Makerspace, some small steps were made forward on my project. I spent far too long trying to assemble the new ‘third hand’ for soldering. Ben did an A-MAY-ZING job printing out the Thingiverse parts, and even got some screws and wingnuts to put it together with (thank you so so so much, Ben!) The end result is really quite charming.

It’s a mile and a half beyond the one I frankensteined together the other day, and it’s really going to work out very well for future soldering. I also managed to get some air hose on the soldering fume extractor, so we’re golden on that front.

In terms of the Arcade, well another friend at the shop, Taper, helped sort out the various power levels coming out of my ATX power supply..and helped me find the all-important 12v and 5v wires. Similarly, he also helped me sort out which usb wires I need to put together, to build the usb extension ports.

So, as soon as I can locate a donor ‘MOLEX’ receiver, then I can actually look into the very real step of starting wiring and soldering up some connections for all of this. I was able to power the USB HD off the ATX PSU last night..and was able to boot up the rom library while pinching the power wires together.. so I am very excited to see this thing coming together, albeit slowly.

[aren-of-the-fen]

The first thing we make at the Makerspace... “do.”

So a few issues came up while working on that volume extension cable. Basically, our entire ‘working on electronics’ area has been neglected for about as long as I’ve been a member. No one’s put any love or care into the space, and it’s rarely used as a soldering or testing station. (I think it’s mostly been used as a place for people to use laptops and stay warm) The other day, when I was trying to do some soldering, I realized two important things. 1. Our “Third Hand” soldering assistant tool had been completely dismantled and parts were missing. 2. We had literally zero ventilation for soldering. (also, soldering fumes were poison to my asthma, so this had to be resolved. I put the call out to the group, and Ben volunteered to 3D print out parts for a fume extractor that I found on Thingiverse. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:190682 So Friday, I began assembling it. I found a suitably sized PC fan in the bins in Pick-a-part, and a 12v power supply to run it. I also located a small swingarm lamp that we’d spent the last 6 months shuttling back and forth across the shop. Another member, Bruce, helped get a piece of wood drilled out and cut out a pocket for the power supply and a switch.

So it’s now assembled, and it works. Still needs a bit of dryer hose on the end, but it will suck up solder fumes nicely now. I went through the various bins of random at the shop and used my improvisation superpowers to reassemble a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster version of a third hand.

There’s a few small magnets in key places, as well as a loose piece of an old pencil compass that I used as an arm extension, and the alligator clips were liberated from one of the many testing wires that we had laying around. Sacrificing one of these so that soldering could be done reasonably again, seemed like a fair enough trade. I didn’t get to do any actual work on my arcade project that night, but both of these projects will make moving forward on my project much easier and safer. I’ve found a couple of Thingiverse designs for third-hand builds, so I’ll put out a call for one of the 3d folks to maybe make that happen. I know my jerry-rigged solution isn’t going to be a ‘good longterm’ solution.. but it was ‘something for now’.

[aren-of-the-fen]

About time for an update

Whoops! Sorry about that. So what’s been going on with me at the Makerspace lately? Well, quite a bit. I worked on a few projects, some of them succeeded at the shop, others not so much. Lately, I’ve been gathering the various parts needed to create a Raspberry Pi 3 powered arcade machine. Specificall a smaller ‘bartop’ style arcade cabinet. Beginning with a ‘Liquid Video’ brand LCD monitor, which was a free score through some donated time and effort at the shop (We had a lot of computers and monitors donated to the shop by a local tech giant, and in upgrading all our old monitors, well I scored one of the cast-offs for my project). The Raspberry Pi 3, of course, is the heart of the system. Adding an external hard drive connected via USB (donated to the project by a friend), an ATX power supply I scrounged up from the pick-a-part pile..a 2.1 speaker system I had recently upgraded at home, and some other odds and ends. The last portions of the project were a joystick liberated from an ‘iCade’ iPad arcade accessory (donated to the project by another friend) and a bunch of parts ordered through aliexpress.com It’s not much to look at just yet.

But as of last night, all the parts were again working together. You can see in the picture above, the speaker set behind the monitor, the monitor itself, and in front, you can see the hard drive, and the raspberry pi, as well as the power strip that’s running everything. Unseen still, the ATX power supply (it was sitting behind the monitor) and the Xbox controller that I was using because the arcade controller hasn’t been assembled yet (but you can totally see the bag of colorful buttons) I’ve worked up a bit of a flowchart for the project’s connections.. I think it makes it easier to understand the whole plan.

You’ll notice that there are two green audio cables coming off the Raspberry Pi.. this was actually a ‘bug’ that I ran into that I decided to turn into a feature. When I got the monitor, it had built-in speakers. At first, I was excited, but on plugging them in, I realized they were very low-powered speakers, probably best used in an office environment. Arcade games demand more sound, so I set about freeing up my home PC's 2.1 sound system. Then I realized I had an opportunity to have the monitor’s built-in speakers function for ‘low volume’ sound times.. and then I can dial up the volume on the 2.1 system (with subwoofer) for those times when I want a more full-featured arcade experience. So in a way, I’m making a 2+2.1 sound system. Last night, I cracked open those speakers to strip off all the plastic shells and spent some time soldering an extension cable so that the 2.1 system’s volume control knob could be moved to anywhere I wanted in my build, instead of being tethered to just a couple inches from the right speaker. I’ve given some thought to the layout of the control panel, and I’ve worked up this sketch of what it might look like.

Not my artwork, just trying to get a feel for how it might work.. and I figured, why not have some fun while I was doing that. ABXY are placed in a similar way to the Xbox controller (backward to the Nintendo, sorry). L and R will be the left and right ‘shoulder’ buttons. I’m not planning to try to fit the left and right trigger buttons into this design, as most arcade and classic home gaming emulators top out at 6 action buttons. My cabinet design is going to have two USB ports in the front, so if needed we can plug in a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo-styled controller, to get the full effect for a given system. There’s also going to be a rectangular button that mimics the traditional red ‘coin return’ buttons. You won’t be able to put coins into it, but pushing this button will trigger a ‘coin inserted’ event in the games, at least on the arcade emulators. for classic home systems.. I suspect it’ll act as a “Select” button. The final console layout is one of the last steps of the project, and there’s definitely a lot still to be done before we get there. Tomorrow’s work will start with the process of removing the monitor’s internal electronics from the plastic shell, and likely creating another extension cable so that the monitor’s power button and menu controls can be located on the cabinet where desired. For now tho, it’s a project!

[aren-of-the-fen]

Resurrection of Proteus

The Eugene Makerspace (EMS) has a lot of the really cool computer controlled powertools I’ve always wished I could mess with. And it seems simple enough: make a plan on the computer, take the file to the machine, and hit ‘go’... and your realworld object comes out the other side.

But in real life, nothing is ever so simple. Sometimes designs need to be revised, mistakes need to be corrected, and cuts or prints need to be redone. It’s just a fact of life.

Because I don’t own a laptop, any significant change needed in a design would require me to travel home to make changes, and since it’s a 2+ hour round trip on the bus, I’d most likely have to come back another day to try the fabrication again. For a casual change to a design, this would be infuriating.

So the other day, I went to the ‘computer’ Goodwill, and spent some time finding parts to turn an old Compaq Presario out of their ‘scraptop’ shelf, into a working computer that could run Image editing, 3D modelling and cad software.

The Compaq Presario CQ-60, as seen in 2010.

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been nursing someone’s long forgotten laptop back to life. With a couple gigs of ram, a ~320gb hard drive, and an Ubuntu (16.4) install disc that I picked up for 99 cents.

It’s no great beast of a machine, and it’s certainly no high-powered gaming rig... but the Intel Celeron processor inside runs at 2.16GHz, so it’s still leaps and bounds above my tiny netbook.

So far, it’s working. It desperately needs a new keyboard, which thankfully, only runs about $15 these days. I’ve reinstalled Ubuntu a couple of times due to assorted errors in upgrading to 17.4, and then restarting and upgrading only to 16.10.. but I’f finally just settled on installing 16.4 and leaning on what’s stable for now.

It only needs to run Gimp, Inkscape, and a few CAD apps. Maybe Blender if I’m feeling extremely ambitious.

I’ve decided to name it Proteus, a reference to the miniature submarine in Fantastic Voyage, but also as a play on the word “Prototype”.

[aren-of-the-fen]

My first visit to the Eugene Makerspace

Open Hack Night - 4/14/2017

One word: woohoo!

I had a great time meeting and chatting with a couple of the members down there.

Of course, I literally can’t remember ANYONE’s names.. but that’s pretty standard for me. That’ll come though, with time and repetition.

I definitely felt welcomed there.. and after my 2 hour visit, I’m far more concerned with coming up with something *TO* make, than whether or not I’ll fit in there, or whether people will like me, etc.

It’s a pretty cool space. I’m going to have to do a lot of learning to learn how to use those machines, and how to do so safely. Among the machinery available, there’s a laser cutter, some cnc machines and lathes, and a couple of 3d printers.

Funding my projects, in terms of materials alone, is likely to be a challenge. While they’ve got a fairly large scrap pile that people can dig into.. I don’t want to be one of those people who just takes and doesn’t carry their own weight, much less give back.

Think I might make a run out to Harbor Freight and/or Wheeler Dealer tomorrow, and see if I can find a bit of basic safety gear for myself. (no one likes sharing earplugs).