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Why I love Hipstamatic

John / February 20, 2012 / Mobile, Photography / 1 Comment

Let me start by saying I don’t hate Instagram, I’m just not a fan…this post is why I love Hipstamatic (for the iPhone) and use it constantly. This post also isn’t about the sharing community that is behind Instagram (which is pretty impressive)…anything that inspires people to take more photos is awesome in my book.

But first, a little background.

I became a photographer while in high school, shooting film. Most often it was a Pentax K1000 like so many others started with:

(pay no attention to my hair, it was the 80′s after all)

After high school, one of my first real jobs was working in a mall photo lab. This gave me unlimited access to nearly free film and processing thanks to my staff discount. This enabled me to shoot film like people shoot digital today: to shoot LOTS of photos without counting the cost of every frame.

I still have boxes and boxes of film negatives and prints that I’d like to scan one day.

But this post isn’t about that. It’s about the feeling I had (and still get) when I shoot film. You compose your shot and hope for the best because in most cases, it could be days or weeks before you see the resulting photo. This process makes picking up a set of prints better than Christmas for me. Even more so if there are a number of different sessions of photos on a particular roll.

Doesn’t matter if I’m using a 35mm SLR, one of my many Holga’s or some other weird film camera I found at a flea market. It’s all the same nostalgia for me.

Shooting film also requires you to make a number of decisions outside of composition. You have to choose why type of film (and speed) you’re going to use. You also choose what type of lens you’ll use (which of course is the same with a digital SLR). All these factors come into play before you’ve even shot a frame.

When I go on photo walks, I regularly leave most of my gear at home and only use a certain lens for the entire walk. This tends to force you to think more creatively how you’ll capture something with a limited set of options.

Anyways, back to Hipstamatic.

I don’t think Hipstamatic was the first one, but it certainly came out during the gold rush of iPhone apps that simulated a vintage camera look and feel. It immediately captured my attention because of the way that it works: you choose your lens, film, flash and even the case before you take your shot. You don’t get to preview it nor do you get to mess with it afterwards. It worked just like film cameras do. You also couldn’t open your previously shot photos to run them through the different lenses and films (well, unless you shot a photo of that photo I guess). I use CameraBag for that anyways.

You even have to wait for the photo to process with Hipstamatic…just like film. Then, if everything worked and the app doesn’t crash, you get to see your result.

All of these variables go into crafting the photo before you press the big yellow shutter button.

This is why I like Hipstamatic. It feels comfortable. It feels like Christmas when you get your shot processed.

I rarely do much, if any post processing to my digital photos. If I do, it’s usually limited to cropping, white balance correction or bumping up the contrast a little. This is likely because in the pre-Photoshop days of film photography, all your post processing was done in the darkroom. I loved playing in the darkroom but it was an expensive endeavor since the materials to develop your film and make prints was pretty expensive to a high school student. Digital changed that and allowed us to experiment to our hearts content. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it’s just that I learned early one to try and get it right in the camera and not use the darkroom (or post-processing) as a crutch to fix a poor photo. That’s not to say I don’t fix my own bad photos (I definitely do) but I don’t make it my normal process and it’s usually limited to ‘one-timers’ if I can help it. I probably have thousands of amazing photos, save for one flaw that I couldn’t fix, that will never see the light of day.

This is one of the things I don’t like about Instagram – you shoot a basic photo and then you process it all to hell. The net result is not that different than making the choices of lenses and film in Hipstamatic, since there are a plethora of choices (in app purchases & freebies) but the choice was made up front, not after the fact.

This post may label me a film (or Hipstamatic) snob but I don’t consider myself as such. It’s more about the joy of photography for me and why I have well over 6,400 photos on my iPhone from the last few months…a large percentage of which were shot with Hipstamatic.

I even bought the ‘real world’ Hipstacase for my iPhone for it (with a nicely integrated & removable tripod attachment):

It adds just that little extra to the whole experience.

Prusa Mendel Update #5: It’s alive & printing!

John / February 16, 2012 / 3D Printing, Video / 4 Comments

After a night of fixing various problems, I finally have my Prusa printing objects that actually resemble objects!

It’s no where near calibrated nor perfect but it’s working reliably now that I have the J-Head hotend installed along with Greg’s ‘Guidler’ extruder along with the motor strain relief bracket.

I had to fix a number of alignment issues with my belts, adjust a pulley, reseat and level the print bed to get to this point.

This is a quick printing wire clip which turned out really well considering I haven’t really calibrated anything yet beyond levelling the print bed:

The one on the left is literally the first thing I tried printing (before I fixed a number of issues) and the one on the right is pretty close to what it was supposed to be. It’s a little smooshed as I grabbed it while it was still warm.

Printing in PLA is quite different than the ABS I’m used to…it’s very oozy. I’m going to need to install a fan to cool the print faster.

It’s SOOOO much quieter than my MakerBot!

I’m excited to finally have things up and running. Now I just need to start calibrating the printer.

UPDATE: Received a fresh roll of transparent green PLA and added a temporary light to the extruder. I’d originally tried printing on glass with a cold bed, then a heated bed and then settled on cold blue painters tape.

The first few layers always seem to have issues sticking. Perhaps my Z height needs to be lower (squishier) or it’s a temperature thing. The green PLA seems to be more cotton candy like with stringy micro filaments that get caught under the nozzle and wreak havoc.

The cube on the left was literally the first thing I printed when I installed the new spool of green PLA and turned out nearly perfect. Glassy bottom, not too smooshed 1st layer and the top is nice and smooth. The middle one was a combination of things including a filament feed issue (spool not rolling freely) and the last one was the last thing I printed yesterday on blue painter’s tape. It’s decent but not quite as nice as the 1st cube.

I was tired of printing cubes so I thought I’d try something relatively fast to print, and was a trickier item to print due to the shape of the text. I’ve printed tons of these geeks on my MakerBot so I know how they are supposed to turn out (in ABS at least):

Unfortunately it didn’t finish printing. Just as well too since there were problems with it due to the errant blobs of PLA causing the hotend to skip and the alignment was off on the text layers as it went higher.

It stopped printing because my laptop keeps cutting out (like it’s completely powered off with no warning, kernal panic, just off) randomly while printing (after 7-10 minutes of printing), killing the print. I’m guessing it’s a USB communication error (tried both ports & my USB cable already has ferrite cores on each end of it) or line noise from the wiring. It was much worse when I tried to tidy my wires up by bundling them together but once I undid that, it got better (longer prints) but it still happened with this print. My desktop doesn’t seem to have the same problem though but that’s not nearly as convenient to use as a controller for the printer.

Maybe it’s time to get the SD Ramps board installed so I can print without needing it connected beyond starting the print.

Lastly, I found these RepRap coins which are a nice alternative to the calibration cubes. They print fast, are a little tricky and print well:

UPDATE #2: Last night I finally soldered the pins to the SD Ramps board I had ordered with my electronics originally and the headers to the RAMPS (along with the important D1 diode under the X/Y drivers to allow for computerless operation) in the hopes that this would solve my issues (or make it moot) with my laptop not staying connected:

Julian’s post was very helpful in navigating my exact configuration. This involved disconnecting everything and removing the RAMPS 1.4 board to solder onto it which gave me the opportunity to detangle some of the wires which may have been causing my line noise issues. I also labeled each wire before removing it to make it easier to reconnect.

I had originally planned on wiring the SD Ramps instead of the normal header way but ended up going with the headers as it was easier and a more robust connection that I had originally thought. To my great surprise, upon plugging the SD Ramps into the arduino mega, it worked! I then reconnected the RAMPS and all the wiring and reflashed the arduino with Sprinter with added SD support (by uncommenting one line of the configuration code) and hoped for the best. Booted everything up and again, to my great surprise, Pronterface recognized there was a SD card connected and allowed me to load up some of the gcoded files I already had on it. The hot end heated up and away it went printing. I then disconnected the printer in Pronterface and unplugged the USB cord and the printer kept going. A few minutes later I had my first untethered calibration cube printed…and it was nearly the best one yet! Yay!

I got a little cocky and then reconnected everything again and tried to print the geek keychain. It works flawlessly until about 5 minutes into the print and then some blobby PLA caused it to skip again and I ended up reconnecting to the printer to stop it – unfortunately there is no other way to stop the printer when it’s going by itself other than to kill the power.

Stay tuned as I attempt to solve this problem…my guess is that my extruder calculations in the Sprinter firmware needs to be recalibrated. Brad’s also suggested that I switch to Marlin which I may also do in the coming days.

Learning to Solder Better

John / February 9, 2012 / Hacking, Technology / No Comments

I’ve owned a soldering iron for as long as I can remember. But I’ve never felt I’ve been very good at using it. Lately I’ve been needing to do more and more soldering (thanks to my 3d printer building among other things) so I thought I should probably get better at it.

One thing I’ve heard over and over again is to practice with a simple electronics kit. So I’ve been buying a few kits here and there and have recently been forcing myself to put one together whenever I have a little time.

Aside from being fun little gadgets to have once complete, these truly are a great way to get better at soldering. It is simple through-hole soldering but it’s something I’ve always felt sloppy at.

My soldering ‘night school’ started last week with this custom name badge from Analog Machines which I picked up recently from the MakerShed:

It’s big and bright! Perfect for wearing in a lanyard badge holder.

Next up was the TV-B-Gone kit from Adafruit Industries – one of my favorite places to order from.

I promise to not be too evil with such great power.

The latest kit I assembled is the Solder Time kit I bought from SparkFun.com (another favorite store) which is quite possibly the geekiest watch of all time.

The kit comes with a red LED segment display but I ordered a separate green one and swapped it in which is another fun thing about these kits is that you can modify them to make them your own. I had originally planned to use this ‘watch’ in my MakerBot as a visible timer (minus the acrylic case and wristband of course) for time lapse videos but I think it’s too big to fit where I wanted to use it.

It’s amazing to see the difference in my soldering abilities after the practice from putting together these extremely well documented kits. It really gives you a good idea of what the end result is supposed to look like, as well as extra tips for soldering different types of electronic components.

There is also a comic book (in PDF form) called Soldering is Easy that is a great resource for getting started with soldering.

My next project will be the Minty Boost kit that I got from the vending machine at Metrix Create Space during a recent trip to Seattle.

I think I’ve finally earned my soldering skill badge.

Update: Here’s my completed Minty Boost Kit – ready to charge up my iPhone:

Reprappers of the world unite

John / February 7, 2012 / 3D Printing, Hacking, Technology / 2 Comments

This past weekend, I hosted the guys from our Fraser Valley RepRap group at my place so that we could actually setup our machines to print and tinker. This is something we’ve wanted to do at our regular meetings but the folks at Boston Pizza, while very accommodating, probably wouldn’t be too keen on us printing stuff on their tables during our meetups.

Brad (aka Sublime) was the first to show up with his Prusa Mendel shown here printing a part on my coffee table:

and he also brought along a nearly complete prototype of his fully printable, mini 3d printer. Look how cute it is! Note the pop can for scale inside.

Check out the super tiny hotend he made (although he is considering using a J-Head after seeing the ones we recently ordered):

Derek also brought along his Citadel Mendel prototype printer:

It was pretty cool to see so many printers in one place (my living room & kitchen counter) and that 2 of them were incredible prototype designs.

With Eugene’s help, I also got my new J-Head hotend setup:

Just need to wire it up to my Prusa and (finally) start printing.

This is definitely shaping up to be the year of 3d printing…it seems every day major media is covering different aspects of how this technology is changing the game.

UPDATE: Brad has just posted about his mini printer with a lot more details and specifications. Sounds like it is getting a lot of (justified) attention in the RepRap community.

UPDATE #2: Brad has named his mini-printer “Tantillus” and it now has a wiki page on the reprap site

Monster Jam Monster Truck show

John / February 4, 2012 / Video / 1 Comment

Yesterday I did a guest post on Miss604.com about the big Monster Jam Monster Truck show this weekend. Thought I’d post the video and a few photos from the media event as they turned out pretty cool.

I’d never been inside a monster truck before and had a chance to climb around inside one.

Once again, my GoPro’s came in very handy. In this photo, I’m mounting the GoPro to one of the rollbars inside. You enter these trucks by walking under the outer shell and then climb up via some cutouts in the chasis:

which made this video possible:

(no GoPros were harmed during this video)

I love how the inside of BC Place looks like a hot air balloon:

New Gear section

John / February 1, 2012 / Site News / No Comments

Just a little post highlighting the new gear page I just added that lists all the photo, video and tech gear I use regularly.

Very similar to my Flickr profile listing but more in depth and lots of links to it all for the curious.

Prusa Mendel build update #4

John / January 18, 2012 / 3D Printing / No Comments

In my last update on the building of a Prusa Mendel reprap 3d printer, I finally got everything working in with the printer…if only for a few minutes.

I’ve yet to actually print anything recognizable thanks to a number of challenges along the way.

Once I got the software sorted, I tried printing some calibration cubes. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out as the extruder got clogged with PLA almost immediately. It seems I was trying to force the filament into the hotend faster than it should have been. So then I had to disassemble it, clear it out and try again.

After rebuilding the hotend, the X axis belt was loose so in the process of tightening it, I managed to break all the PLA bushings that were supporting the X axis. I had already fixed these recently so was pretty much done with them at this point. Fortunately, I received some LM8UU linear bearings (from Mixshop.ca which are smaller than normal ones for some reason) and printed some replacement parts (in blue – I couldn’t be bothered to swap colors to match the previously printed green ones).

I liked the design of the Prusa 2 parts but wasn’t prepared to cut my smooth rod to make it work so I modified a derivative version of the Prusa 1 idler to fit my LM8UUs (which I posted on Thingiverse in case it would be useful to anyone else). I now have a hybrid X axis since the motor mount is this one (with the awesome integrated endstop trigger) and the idler is a modified Prusa 1 version for LM8UUs.

It all works so I’m happy and I don’t have to worry about snapping off any more bushings. I opted to stick with the old X-carriage as it’s opening is large enough to allow me to remove the extruder and hotend without having to disassemble it (although I may swap in this open x version once I track down the bearings…which leads me to my next issue:

Seems that once again, I was pushing too much filament into the hotend and I may have had a problem during one of my rebuilds with the teflon tape getting compromised which lead to the ‘leakage’ of PLA above the PEEK block in the photo above.

This should be easy to fix and I’ll try it all again very soon. Once again, the folks in the local RepRap group I belong to helped out very quickly by helping to diagnose the issues just from some photos so I hope to be finally printing by this weekend.

One final thing for Reprap users on Mac OSX – Kliment has released a native OSX app version of Pronterface which I found on his Github while troubleshooting getting a new version of it running…this is great as it means I don’t need to run a couple of command line scripts in order to get Pronterface going anymore. Works like a charm!

Snowy Owls of Boundary Bay

John / January 16, 2012 / Photography, Travel / 9 Comments

With the great afternoon weather we’ve been having lately, it seemed like the perfect time to finally head out to Boundary Bay in Delta to check out the snowy owls. To add to the effect, it had recently snowed too.

I was surprised how close the owls were to the trail (and tons of people) and we were able to see at least 8 in just our field of view…with many more further out. There was even a barn owl hunting nearby but I wasn’t able to get any good shots of him.

No shortage of photographers doing the same thing I was, except with much better (or at least more expensive) gear:

This is what $12 million gets you…the estate overlooking the owls and the bay:

I also managed to capture one of my favorite sunsets yet:

View the full photo set on Flickr.

If you want to check out the owls for yourself, head out towards Ladner via Hwy 99. Turn left onto Ladner Trunk Road and then right at 72nd Street (follow the signs to Boundary Bay Airport). Stay on 72nd until the end of the road and park where ever you can (likely along 72nd but there are a few parking spaces at the very end). There is a trail you should stay on that gives you plenty of viewing of owls. Don’t disturb the owls by getting too close…there are lots of signs saying as such.

A Visit to Seattle’s Hackerspace: Metrix Create Space

John / January 13, 2012 / 3D Printing, Hacking, Travel / 2 Comments

During the recent holidays, I spent a few days in Seattle. One of the things I’ve wanted to do there for awhile is visit Metrix Create Space, Seattle’s hackerspace.

Conveniently, they have a regular 3d printer night on Thursdays and that happened to be the night I had free to visit.

Upon arriving, I was greeted by Matt, the owner of Metrix and he gave me a tour. It’s definitely a maker’s dream space with lots of room, tools and even a sushi place upstairs that delivers to nerds in need.

There is an array of cool tools to use including 3d printers, a laser cutter, a giant CNC machine and lots of soldering/laptop workstations.

One of the things I had read about Metrix is that they have been making clonedel parts for 3d printers which are basically molds that you use to create objects out of whatever material you pour into the molds. It was cool to see the setup in person and check out the quality of the parts:

There was also a couple of reprap printers built with the clonedel parts:

They also have a vending machine filled with arduino microcontrollers and other geeky toys, snacks (including MREs!) and electronic kits. I ended up buying a bunch of things for myself from the machine:

Since this was a 3d printer night, Matthew brought down his CupCake:

(aka a FakerBot since it was a copy of Makerbot’s open source design that they made at Metrix) which he had modified to make it quite similar to my beloved Thing-O-Matic in how the Z stage operates.

I brought some of my prints and we compared parts. His modified CupCake was printing incredibly well…just as good as my Thing-O-Matic and much better than the output I had seen from stock CupCakes, thanks to his mods (which he posted on Thingiverse shortly after my visit).

I love how the CupCake has all the electronics and wiring on the OUTSIDE…so much more accessible:

It was a very fun way to spend a Thursday night in Seattle…I highly recommend checking out Metrix if you’re in Seattle as they offer lots of interesting workshops and a really cool atmosphere.

Using Tinkercad to design a 3D printable model

John / January 10, 2012 / 3D Printing, Technology, Video / No Comments

One thing I get asked all the time about my 3D printers is where do I get the models that I print? I follow Thingiverse daily to see what others have created but sometimes you need something very specific. So you have to create it yourself.

One method I’ve used is 2D extrusion which how I made the page keeper gadget for a coworker.

Another method is called solid modelling. There is a relatively new website, called Tinkercad, that gives you the tools to create 3D objects right in your browser, for free. It is built on the WebGL platform so requires a modern browser (and in some cases, modern graphics cards) to run it…I used Chrome as Safari doesn’t currently support WebGL.

Using a number of different shapes you can add or subtract the shapes to build up your design.

You choose the height and the size of the shape using direct numeric entry or a slider.

Choosing the workplane allows you change the level or angle you’re working on.

The measure tool allows you to create a positionable ruler to assist with measurements of your design.

The top left menu item, “Print 3D”, is how you export your model. You can either export it to an *.STL file (which is compatible with other 3d software packages as well as the software I use to print with my 3d printer) or you can send it to a 3d printing service like Shapeways.com if you don’t own a 3d printer. They’ll print it for you, in a number of different material options and ship it to your door.

Here’s their quick start tutorial that should give you a better idea of how it works:

I wanted to design a mount that would allow me to attach my GoPro camera to a remote control quadcopter. I couldn’t find a design on Thingiverse so I toyed with modifying some other GoPro mounts on there for the purpose but nothing looked like it would work any better than simply duct taping the camera down.

I also didn’t want to modify the quadcopter at all so opted to use the same mount point for the battery which already has velcro to hold it in place. I did find a mount online that someone designed and printed with a 3d printer who was selling it but there wasn’t any good detail photos of it so I had to come up with my own version and used my calipers to measure everything.

It took a few iterations before I found a design that worked:

The final version (I had to print two of them):

Here’s the results of this mount attached to the quadcopter with GoPro camera installed:

Turned out pretty good! Now to design one that fits underneath the quadcopter for an unencumbered view.

Another cool thing about Tinkercad is that you are given a permalink to your design that you can share. Then others can make a copy of it and make other things with it. I did this with something I found on Thingiverse, a tool holder for my 3d printer, that was a cleverly designed mount for tools that are commonly used when operating the 3d printer. I thought the same object, minus the tool parts, would be great for mounting my webcam onto the printer. The creator of the tool holder had used Tinkercad to create it so it was easy to duplicate it and then erase the unneeded bits to make this:

So I made a couple versions, a big and small one depending on what you wanted to attach to the platform.

So far, I’ve been really impressed with Tinkercad. I’ve found it the easiest way to get designing something, without all the usual technical stuff. It did take a little getting used to and it was a little tricky to figure out the workplane stuff, but once I spent a little time with it, it got much easier. I also now have two different designs that I have successfully printed and are working great.

There’s also a newer beta version you can try out at labs.tinkercad.com.