Tuesday / Wednesday at 10Bit

[Don Smeller]

Tuesday:

There were, like, 8 people at 10Bit on Tuesday.

Additionally, 3 of us went to Austin and did an Elequa water purification workshop at the SXSW Eco Conference in front of 23 people.  A pair of film makers caught the action for a documentary: upstart-start-up-saves-the-planet-with-old-technology-made-new.

Ryan won first place for his earlier water related film and collected the $500 prize.  Plus, get this, he now proudly carries a card that entitles him to a year’s worth of Raisin’ Cane’s Chicken Fingers.

Sometime around midnight Tuesday,  Ray and Ken witnessed the CNC DynaMill rise from its smokey ashes and spin all its motors.  Spoiler Alert:  It turns out, the mystery wire was a sheathed ground, that, sure enough, needed to be attached to the spindle.  The X, Y, Z and spindle moves were accomplished with jog commands.  Next, we all will have to learn Mach3 which is the CNC’s g-code based controller language. You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out.  Or something like that.  I’m getting App Fatigue, here, but hey, it’s either that or Alzheimer’s.  

Sean Kelly and James V seem to be making Tuesday into Quad Tuesday.  They are attracting to 10Bit the propeller heads of San Antonio.  Some really clever people out there.

There’s a new wifi on top of the rack.  Thanks James V.

Wednesday:

A skeleton crew of only 6 showed up on Wednesday.

John F, Don S, James M, Ken R, Ryan B and another Jon,

John Frazee has been spiffing up our website with what I think of as a calm-before-the-storm color palette.  He put a new feature into our website’s navigation bar, a “Virtual Tour” of the shop area. http://www.10bitworks.com/    Check it out. Mouse around. 

Jon King, born in ’38, made his second visit to 10Bit.  He was an Air Force pilot, did a Vietnam tour, measured magnetic fields at Berkeley, retired from a second career as an electrical engineer.  Wednesday, Jon added a whole new string of lifetime firsts to his resume.  He drew his first 3D CAD cuboid using Onshape.   He exported it as an STL.  He Slic3r’ed it.  And he 3D Printed it.  Appropriately, Jon used the grandfather printer.  Jon’s son has promised to take him to a Hackerspace in Dallas.  It’s a spy mission. We’ll be getting a report comparing Dallas to San Antonio.  Stay tuned.

While we played with things 3D, we watched a batch of salt water going through the electrocoagulation process.  10.5 grams of table salt in 2/3rds of a pint of San Antonio tap water.  We left it running for 3 hours. Not a whiff of Chlorine.  In fact, afterwards the water tasted and smelled like . .  . ? . . . ocean?  So, that stuff on top? is it sea foam?  We’ve got to get a chemist to join 10Bit. 

James M’s InMoov robot is taking shape.  He took the whole week off from work and is putting in long hours 3D printing the last of the parts and rigging the motion devices.  The head now rotates under computer control.

A laser etched tortilla, left out, has attracted a small grey mouse.  James put out a couple of traps near the solder station. Word to the wise, eh?  The weather is getting cooler.  The critters are moving indoors.  Stow the food.

Don S

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[Les Hall]

For what it's worth, in the time frame of this message (Tuesday I believe) Les breathed life into an eSP8266 IoT WiFi module from Adafruit.  Such a device is, in this case, programmed by Arduino and has Arduino-like pinouts for mostly digital I/O and is also WiFi capable.  

Les configured it as an access point meaning it shows up on a list of WiFi choices with an SSID and password.  Once logged in you can control an on-board LED via a web page.  

Possible applications include elequa coagulators that "phone home" with their data, 3D printers, robots, and other machinery that have only power busses for wiring (all WiFi controlled and reporting back diagnostics via web), and all manner of 10bit projects made IoT and all WiFi-ish.  

Les

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[Don Smeller]

Great stuff, Les.  You da man.

Don

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