Whiteboard dimensions?

[David Knaack]

Does anyone know the dimensions of the large whiteboard at the space?

Also, I'm looking for ideas for mounting an X-Y table around it. 

I'm thinking aluminum extrusion, maybe Maker Slide or something equivalent. Two long rails mounted above and below on stand-offs about 5cm from the wall would form the Y axis. On those would run a T- or I-shaped X axis rail. The tool head would have an array of Expo Click whiteboard markers.

The machine would take gcode served from a computer. The computer would accept vector files, SVG, maybe DXF. These would be sent to the computer via a web service, which would be accessed via any of a variety of interfaces (for example, visitors to the web page could use an on-page virtual whiteboard drawing tool which would then send the file to the real whiteboard, to allow remote interaction).

[tavshed]

I believe 6' x 4'

- Mike

[Dan Linder]

I like that idea, I always wanted a smart board that could put up previous text.

As a phase two idea, is there a way to capture the human writing as a series of vectors cheaply?  An obs system I saw 11 years ago had special reflective tips on the markers and two sensors to capture X-Y locations...  Could a webcam do the same?

Dan

[David Knaack]

Capture can be done via webcam, but the results generally require some manual cleanup to be useful as a vector format. To capture directly in vector format something like a pantograph with encoders would probably be more useful. Technically an XY table can be used this way if it has encoders, but it's hard to use for drawing.

[Sam Flint]

WiiMote Whiteboard!

On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 12:53 PM, patrick <patrick...@gmail.com> wrote:

One of the EE guys here said he used to work for Nissan and they had a white board that any one could use and when you were done using it you could hit a button and your drawings would be printed out.

--
Sam Flint
flintfam.org/~swflint

[Kevin Fusselman]

The one I've used is called a "panaboard", by Panasonic. Very handy.

[Sam Flint]

Try a WiiMote Whiteboard and the FLOSS Whyteboard software, and GTKWhiteboard.

Sam

--
Sam Flint
flintfam.org/~swflint

[Brandon Norris]

If you dont want to make a huge gantry system just for writing thing, I was thinking a polargraph system seems like a good idea.

This one looks like a really nice choice to get up and running fairly quick.

https://code.google.com/p/gocupi/ 

I have a couple stepper motor drivers to contribute, and Im pretty sure there a a couple motors we could use there.

[David Knaack]

Looks pretty good. Does the Pi lack sufficient GPIO to run the stepper drivers directly?

[Brandon Norris]

I dont think its the matter of IO. From what Ive read elsewhere, the problem with machine control is that you need a real time OS to drive it precisely enough.

The Pi, IIRC, doesnt have a good real time OS yet, and the arduino is a really easy adapter for that.

[Sam Flint]

that's what the -rt patch is for

Sam

--
Sam Flint
flintfam.org/~swflint