The Iron Girl Project - Systems Report and HUD Updates

Howdy y'all! Some interesting updates have happened with the HUD, so I'll dive right in.

I've swapped Processing out for the Unity game engine, both for performance and ease of manipulation in 3D space. Unity works much like a regular 3D application, whereas Processing requires you to place objects via a coordinate system. Attempting to animate any elements in Processing quickly became a nightmare, and adding and placing new components was time-consuming. Here's an example of the first copy of the Unity HUD:

Since Unity supports C#, a JavaScript-ish thing called UnityScript, and Boo (a Python variant), it means there's a nice variety of coding choices for different elements. For instance, the scripts that run the dynamic text on the screen are in JS, while the script that pulls in data from the serial port (which is fed numbers by an IMU hooked up to an Arduino) is in C#. Below is an example of the working serial feed.

After a lot of blundering about and experimenting, I took a few weeks to got some actual training in Unity (from a company called Digital-Tutos), after which I redid the HUD in GUI elements, rather than TextMesh objects mapped to 3D assets. This way, no matter what, elements on the HUD will resize to fit the screen resolution and aspect ratio of the target system. (The end goal of this is to achieve stereoscopic rendering via Google Cardboard's SDK, but shhh - don't tell anyone, that'll be a surprise). Examples of dynamic GUI elements:

Test builds are now available for both Windows and OS X over on the download page. Please download them, and comment below/send me a message on your experiences. I have a decent number of Linux and Windows test machines, but I have no testing platforms for OS X. I also don't have any way of testing multiple camera setups, as I only have 3 or 4 at home. If you put something on COM3 at 115200kbs, it'll write it to the Debug Log.

Have fun with it, and let me know the results!

In other news, I'm currently delaying work on fabrication (and to a lesser extent, design) of physical pieces for the IGP suit. I may be moving in the next few months to a larger space, which should greatly increase my ability to produce parts, but until then, I'd rather not prototype a bunch of stuff that I'll then have to carefully box up and move. So expect HUD-focused stuff for the next few months. Around September, things should settle down again and I'll be able to switch to physical production.

Have a lovely evening, and go make something awesome!

Cheers,
~Lexikitty

Please give a warm welcome...

...to the newest tool in my arsenal shop, the Printrbot Simple Metal. She arrived in considerably more pieces than she is in now, since I got a kit. Since I was listening to Still Untitled for most of the build and I knoll constantly, I decided to knoll all the tools I used in the build in front of the finished printer in Adam's honor.

A few notes about the kit, if any of you are considering it:

• The pieces are extremely solid. The entire thing is made up of very quality parts that will definitely last a good long time.
• The photo-based instructions are vagueish and not really all that helpful. In fact, if you only follow the instructions given, the hot end never actually gets installed - you have to figure it out for yourself that it might be important, being the BUSINESS END OF THE PRINTER AND ALL.
• While they've cut a lot less corners than with the Simple wooden version, the belts are sill secured with zip ties, and I've had at least one issue with it so far from printing with it for two days.
• If this is your first 3D printer, I'd recommend you read up a bit on GCode and Slic3r before ordering even the fully assembled version. I got through it okay, but I'm pretty familiar with microcontrollers and that helped as far as understanding what the heck they were asking you to do during initial setup.
• It's fiddly. I had to rebuild the Z axis assembly twice before it ran smoothly. The extruder jammed once, and the X axis lost tension when running their provided GCode for a fan shroud because the X axis slammed into the frame and pulled the zip tie off the belt. A MakerBot it is not, but it's also not 2K$.

Below are some random shots of the build in progress, followed by the obligatory "it works!" video printing a heart-shaped pencil grip I spent all of 30 seconds on (Art it isn't, but it worked as a good SketchUp to print test). I'll play around with maybe printing some of my Cinema 4D models later, once I have stable printing. I'll probably also post my print settings in another post once I've had a chance to play around with it and get it just right.

And here, you can watch it merrily singing to itself:



Now go build something awesome!

~Lexikitty