All posts in Technology

Gifts to get your geek this holiday season

John / November 3, 2011 / Hardware, Photography, Technology / Comments Off

It’s no secret that most geeks are hard to buy for…myself included. I figured a list of fun things you’re not going to find at the local department store might be useful…with plenty of lead time to buy them online.

In no particular order:

Lomokino & Lomoscope (~$100, Lomography)
I love the concept of this retro film movie making camera from Lomography that uses 35mm film stock to shot about 60 seconds of footage. Sure you can probably fake it with half a dozen iPhone apps but that’s not nearly as fun. Get the bundle as it comes with a projector as well.
Star Wars peppermill ($20, Think Geek)

Think Geek has some of the coolest stuff that you won’t find anywhere else…and this R2D2 peppermill is one of those things. I recently got this for my birthday from my girlfriend and can confirm that Droids DO in fact make the best pepper.
Arduino! ($30-$100, multiple places)

As regular readers here know, I’m a big fan of Arduino microprocessors and there are no shortage of fun projects and kits to check out, regardless of age or skill level. It’s also the brains of my 3D printers. SparkFun has a great starter kit, as does Solarbotics who also has a couple awesome robot platforms to put those microcontrollers to work. Adafruit also has some great kits and lots of other fun stuff. In Vancouver, you can get Arduinos from Lee’s Electronics on Main Street and they also have the SparkFun kits
A 3D Printer – ($500 and up)

A little higher up the $ scale but I definitely know a few people that would love to unwrap a 3D printer. I’ve written extensively about my experiences with 3D printers. This is a kit from Mixshop in Toronto that is only missing the plastic printed parts which can be bought from ebay for around $75 (I also print/sell them). Definitely for those geeks that like to build things from kits and aren’t afraid of a little soldering. Of course you can also go the route I went and get a MakerBot Thing-O-Matic which is a bit easier to build with a higher price tag ($1,324) or you can spend a little more and get it fully assembled ($1,624). Not sure if MakerBot can deliver to Canada with their lead time + customs but the previous links are for Canadian reseller that has them in stock.
The F-Stop Watch ($35, PhotoJoJo)

This is a pretty slick and inexpensive watch for any photographer. PhotoJoJo has lots of other great stuff for the photo geek.
Xshot Extendable Hand Held Monopod (~$25, multiple)

I bought one of these a few years ago and they now have a newer version that is even more compact. I primarily use it with my GoPro to help me get above or below the action. It works with just about any kind of compact still or video camera, you know, when you’re ziplining through the trees in Whistler. Great for taking self portraits as well. I got mine at London Drugs but I can’t find it on their site but it’s definitely in stores. Photojojo also has them.
Gift Cards – (various)

Don’t be afraid to give a gift card to a geek…if you know they have a favorite place to shop for their stuff, they’ll appreciate a gift card more than you trying to guess what they may need.

Happy shopping!

Prusa Mendel: build update

John / October 20, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology / 3 Comments

It’s been awhile so I thought I’d post a quick update on my Prusa Mendel build progress.

Technically, I’ve got everything I need to assemble the 3D printer…just a lack of time lately. I’m hoping to fix that this weekend though.

I’ve got all the electronics now and just need to wire them up.

I ended up going with RAMPS 1.4 that I bought preassembled from Ultimachine. They seemed to have the best reputation and easiest shipping options for me. I also got my heated build platform from them as well. I’ve got the RAMPS mounted to an acrylic mounting plate from Lulzbot.com (I bought just the plate, not the kit, by mistake so had to find some compatible hardware to mount it and fortunately, they posted the mounting clamps on Thingiverse so I was able to print them myself) as I liked how it looked. It also has room to hold an LCD or keypad which I’ve also purchased although I haven’t landed on specifically which firmware to use yet that will ultimately dictate these extras usefullness. My plan is to ultimately be able to print from SD cards using the LCD/keypad combo directly but that’s another hurdle I’ll tackle when the main build is finished.

A friend cut some glass and I now have a 20cm x 20cm heated build platform…nearly double the size of my MakerBot’s!

The Y-axis motor has been mounted as has the lower thick sheet, belt and bushings.

I’m still concerned my bushings are too stiff so will be attempting to loosen them up this weekend using the heat gun on the smooth rod trick I’ve heard about.

And lastly, I’ve figured out what I’m going to do about the extruder and hot end. In the photo, it’s just sitting on the rods for the X-axis and not mounted nor fully assembled. I’m going with Greg’s Accessible Wade’s extruder and the standard hotend for the Wade’s that I got from Mixshop.com. I’ve been waffling back and forth over which diameter to use for the extruder given I have so much ABS plastic filament and PLA is generally harder and more expensive to get in Canada. But I’ve decided to go with the 1.75mm PLA filament for now, as I had originally planned. I bought the parts to make two complete extruders (one in each diameter) so I could always swap it out at a later point if I decide to change my mind.

The biggest challenge during this process is the constantly evolving Reprap community. While I’m half way through my build, a number of revisions to parts I’ve already printed have shown up that makes me ponder reprinting the new parts vs going with what I have and swapping out later. Also, as you can see from the various parts listed, I’ve had to literally source parts from all over the place. Places like Mixshop and others are now starting to put together complete kits for sale but I guess the benefit of sourcing things from all over, it gives me more control over the options that I build into the Prusa.

It’s definitely not for the faint of heart and unfortunately it’s a fairly technical process…but it is a hell of a lot of fun to work on.

As a side note, I just sold my first complete set of Prusa printed parts to someone locally so they can start building their own 3D printer:

I’ve already started printing another set. Contact me if you’d like a set to build your own 3D printer.

Coming full circle with the Chevy Volt

John / October 12, 2011 / Mobile, Reviews, Technology / Comments Off

As regular readers here will know, I’ve been lucky enough to have seen the Chevy Volt from million dollar prototype stage during the 2010 Olympics, all the way through to the final, shipping product that I got to test drive in Alaska earlier this year.

One thing that I wanted to do from the beginning though, is try out the electric vehicle on my own personal commute. I live in Port Coquitlam and drive to North Vancouver every day. It’s about 70 kilometers round trip. Last week, GM Canada loaned me a Volt to try it out on my local commute.

As with previous posts, this is more a overview of the technology in the car than a traditional car review… so I’m going to focus on a couple of things including the realities of charging an electric car at home, driving one on my daily commute and what you can do with GM’s smartphone app for the Volt.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Volt is meant to be charged with a regular 110V wall outlet. It has a dedicated port on the front left side of the car (complete with push button on the key fob and on the driver’s door to open it). It’s a proprietary port for use with the cable reel that is located in the trunk. I had initially spent way too much time looking for a long extension cord inside my house before I realized the cable reel had plenty of cord to go from my garage outlet to my carport without issue. Using this method takes a depleted battery about 10 hours to charge to 100%. This gives you anywhere from 40 to 80 kilometers of electric travel depending on a number of factors including road/traffic conditions, what you have running inside the car (air conditioning, heated seats, charging up your phone, lights, etc). The gas engine tops up the available range to just over 400 kilometers with a full tank of gas & fully charged battery.

If you want to charge it faster, you can get a 220V outlet installed (think of your washer/dryer connection) and the Volt will charge in 4 hours.

Unfortunately for me, at my office, I wasn’t able to find any parking stalls that had ready access to a wall outlet. I’m sure they exist, I just wasn’t able to get a stall that had one during my loan period. So I had to go all day at work without charging that meant I’d get to see if I’d get to go my full commute under battery power.

On the days that I had the car, I seemed to have had some of the worst traffic days in quite a while so it took longer than normal to get home. At the end of the day though, I usually only had to dip into the gas tank for a couple of liters of gas to get home with the battery getting depleted just minutes from my front door. I think during my whole week of usage, I used less than 10 litres of gas.

Since this is a GM vehicle, it came with OnStar and the model I had included the full navigation system which is an optional add-on to the base Volt.

One thing I really liked was the ‘Traffic Events’ that would pop up on the screen via the OnStar service. It was pretty consistent with what the local news radio station was reporting (slightly more realtime) and also reflected the reality on the road in front of me. The events popped up a few kilometers from where they were and showed me exactly where the accident was located and even suggested alternate routes if any.

I also liked the heads up display with navigation right above the steering wheel with key turn by turn directions (I was being audibly told by the nav system to do a legal u-turn when possible in this photo):

The free OnStar RemoteLink app is available for iPhone and Android smartphones in their respective marketplaces. It gives you a lot of control and information about your car at your fingertips. Everything from being able to lock/unlock & start your car remotely, being able to monitor & review your battery life, tire pressure and other vehicle diagnostic information to even honking the horn.

One particularly cool feature was the navigation tab which would give you the ability to search out a destination on your phone and send the routing information to the car. You can also set reminders for charging the vehicle and schedule the charging to begin at specific times if your electricity is cheaper during different times of the day.

One thing I can say after having a few non-geeks in the car during my time with it is that the dash and display screens can seem overwhelming to the uninitiated. Personally, I loved it but I can see how the large console area with it’s plethora of buttons, busy dash and touchscreens can be confusing. No doubt there is a lot going on in this car. Fortunately, you can turn off the screens and just drive normally if that’s your thing.

I really enjoyed my ‘real world’ week with the Volt. If I was looking to upgrade my car right now, I would give it some serious consideration after reviewing my annual gas expenses and mileage. It’s just too bad my home province of BC doesn’t have any rebates for eco vehicles like many other provinces do. It would make the purchase price that much more attractive.

UPDATE: Looks like BC is finally getting on board with rebates for cars like the Volt beginning December 1, 2011!

Game Changers: Bre Pettis

John / October 11, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology, Video / 2 Comments

Time.com just featured Bre Pettis, CEO and co-founder of MakerBot Industries in their Game Changer series.

Bre’s passion for this technology was a huge reason for me buying my own Thing-o-Matic 3D printer and getting into 3D printing in the first place. I think the video captures this quite well along with perfectly explaining the reasons why I think 3D printers are a huge disruptive technology that is in people’s hands right now, thanks to people like Bre.

Prusa Mendel: building the frame

John / August 27, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology / Comments Off

I finished printing all the plastic parts needed to build a Prusa Mendel. Also a box of hardware and motors I ordered from Mixshop arrived so I was able to start assembling.

I decided to print all the plastic parts with 30% infill except the pulleys and gears which I did at 50% infill. I used a 0.28mm layer height, 0 extra shells and 2.88mm ABS filament in Print-O-Matic to print them on my Thing-o-Matic.

I followed Gary Hodgson’s excellent Visual Guide to Prusa on my iPad…made it really easy to see what order the parts needed to be attached and assembled.

I’m still waiting on some PLA bushings I ordered from eBay that are needed before I finish assembling the frame. They should arrive next week sometime.

As you can see from the photos, I opted to go with the army green coloured plastic parts. They printed really well and I think the end result looks pretty cool. I still have to assemble the extruder which I printed in ‘nuclear green’ but I may reprint it in a better matching colour (I can always sell the nuclear green parts).

The Prusa beside my Thing-O-Matic

After much research, I decided to order the necessary electronics for the Prusa from Ultimachine. I’ve placed my order for their pre-assembled RAMPS (RepRap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield board – basically a stack of electronics that runs the Prusa), Kliment’s SD RAMPS (an add-on that lets me print from SD cards without a computer attached), a heated build platform (which almost doubles the print area from my Thing-o-Matic) and a few pounds of PLA (green and blue) so I can print as soon as it’s all assembled.

Cost so far (including shipping and taxes) in case you’re interested in building your own:
Mixshop motors & hardware: $325
Ultimachine electronics & PLA: $364
Total: $689 not including plastic printed parts

Keep in mind I did purchase some higher end and brand new parts. You could easily bring this cost down by getting used motors from ebay, sourcing cheaper electronics (or buy them unassembled to save some money if you can solder).

That’s it for now until some more parts arrive or I assemble the extruder. I’ll leave you with this video that I hope to replicate soon enough when the electronics arrive and I get to test out the stepper motor operation:

Adventures in 3D Printing: the Prusa Mendel

John / August 19, 2011 / 3D Printing, Hacking, Technology / 2 Comments

As part of my continuing adventures with a 3D printer, my next project is printing an actual 3D printer, the opensource Prusa Mendel, a Reprap derivative. Well, printing a good portion of it anyways.

Aside from a larger build platform which utilizes a slightly different way of printing from my MakerBot (both the extruder and build platform move at the same time vs just the build plafform on the MakerBot), I’ll use it to print with PLA filament which is corn based instead of ABS plastic. As well, I’ll be using a smaller, thinner filament size (1.75mm vs the 3mm ABS I’m using with the MakerBot). PLA smells like candy when it’s being extruded and is bio-degradable too! Unfortunately, it’s not food grade so you can’t print candy..yet!

During the recent Vancouver Maker Faire, I got to see a number of Reprap printers up close, including those built and maintained by Wade himself, the man behind the geared extruder design I’m going to be using.

Hardware and motors have already been ordered. Just need to print all the parts for the frame & extruder (the green/red items in the illustration) and decide on a hotend and electronics package.

Total cost should be ~$500.

I found this incredibly detailed video of the process of printing with the Prusa Mendel on YouTube that should give you some more information if you’re curious about the Prusa:

Update: Already have Wade’s Geared Extruder printed:

Turned out awesome in Nuclear Green…the whole Prusa will be printed in this color of ABS. Printing the gear with 50% infill seems like a good torture test of any 3d printer:

Yoda in Nuclear Green

John / August 15, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology, Video / 5 Comments

The other day, Thingiverse member Bmoshe posted this awesome 3D model of Yoda.

Easily the highest resolution model I’ve printed so far on my MakerBot coming in at a whopping 147mb (versus 1-5mb for a complex model on average). It took forever to render the toolpath in Replicator G but was worth it!

It took just under 3 hours to print this hollow (0% infill with 1 extra shell for those that care):

Note the clean white lighting inside the MakerBot – another upgrade performed this weekend to go with the green LED lighting which I can switch between or use both for a softer green light effect.

Aside from a few dropped loops that cleaned up easily, it printed really well. A dropped loop happened in his mouth that makes it look like he’s sticking his 900 year old tongue out.

I think I’ll scale this model down a bit (there is already a lower res model derivative on Thingaverse) and make a small army of them for friends.

Waiting for the Lucasfilm take down notice in 3…2…1…

Testdriving the 2011 Chevy Volt Electric vehicle in Alaska

John / August 14, 2011 / Reviews, Technology, Travel / 2 Comments

Last month, I was invited by GM Canada up to Alaska to try out the 2011 Chevy Volt ahead of the Canadian launch happening this fall. My first encounter with the Volt was during the 2010 Winter Olympics when I got to drive a pre-production model on a test track.

Earlier this year, I also got to briefly drive a production Volt during SXSW as part of their ‘Drive a Chevy’ promotion where they basically offered taxi service to all attendees in Austin and let you drive the car to your destination.

This time though, I got to really try out the production model over the course of the better part of a week. As soon as we landed in Anchorage, Alaska, we were given our ‘own’ cars for the duration of the trip.

I’m actually a target consumer for the Volt. My current commute is just under 70 kilometres roundtrip from Port Coquitlam to North Vancouver each day. With the Volt’s electric range being around 86 kilometres on a single charge, I could easily go to and from work without charging and still have some range for some shopping trips on the way home.

Once the electric battery is depleted, the Volt will seamlessly switch over to power the electric engine using a conventional gas engine where it can continue for nearly 400 more kilometres. Unlike some hybrids, the switchover is unnoticable since the Volt just maintains the electric batteries with the gas engine and doesn’t directly drive the vehicle.

There are more and more options for charging an electric vehicle. Many hotels now offer at least a couple of stalls with power in their parking lots and recently in Vancouver, local parking company, EasyPark announced a pilot program to have a handful of electric outlets designated for electric vehicles in their lots around the city.

While it is possible to charge the Volt via a regular household outlet, it takes about 10 hours to fully charge a depleted battery. If you have access to a 240V outlet (like what your washer/dryer would use), you can charge the battery in about 4 hours. A 240V outlet can easily and cheaply be installed in your garage. The trunk of the Volt has all the connecting cables you need to plug in anywhere using the outlet on the opposite side of the vehicle from the gas tank.

I really enjoyed driving the Volt while in Alaska. As you can see in this short time-lapse video of the road trip, it’s a beautiful place and reminds me quite a lot of BC:

The roadways around the peninsula were surprisingly flat considering we were in quite a mountainous area. So while the Volt has a number of drive handling modes, I couldn’t really tell much difference between them considering the roads were pretty consistent the whole trip.

I’m looking forward to the chance to check out the Volt again once it launches in Canada later this year…and seeing how it really stacks up on my own daily commute. According to GM Canada, the costs of operating the Volt in BC is 1/5 the cost of a comparable gasoline only vehicle. That seems to be a pretty compelling reason to look into this technology closer, not to mention the environmental impacts of using less gas overall.

Animated short about 3D Printing

John / August 5, 2011 / 3D Printing, Technology, Video / Comments Off

I stumbled across this clever animated short film called FULL PRINTED about how 3D printing is useful as well as a potential future of this technology.

FULL PRINTED from nueve ojos on Vimeo.

Replicating Stephen Colbert

John / August 4, 2011 / 3D Printing, Hardware, Technology / Comments Off

Recently I printed Stephen Colbert’s head on my MakerBot (in ‘John Boehner orange’ as someone in the comments on Flickr pointed out):

and made a timelapse of the nearly 2 hour print process:

and then Cory Doctorow blogged about it on BoingBoing.net (thanks to Darren for submitting it).

Which then lead to my “A few weeks with a MakerBot…” post getting picked up by the Spanish version of Digg and over 30,000 hits in 24 hours to the post plus all kinds traffic to other posts and on Flickr.

Pretty cool couple of days around here.

Update: Check out what the guys at MakerBot did with their printed Colbert head:

So awesome!