Month: September 2016

There is a few services out on the web where you can submit a file and someone in the community with a 3d printer can print it for you, think of ride sharing except with 3d printers! 

One problem with this though is it’s almost entirely a manual process. 

You place your order, the website processes it, the person with the printer gets the file, at their earliest convenience they start the print, once they realise it’s complete they let you know. 

I believe a number of parts of this process could easily be automated. 

First comes octoprint, it can run on a raspberry pi and connects the printer to the internet. 
Utilising the API the online service could automatically send the print job to the printer. 

This is the first hurdle, the job can now be sent to the printer automatically, negating the need for the owner to load the file and start the print. 

This isn’t perfect, what if the incorrect filament was loaded? Running out? Or just plain you wanted it resized?

There’s sensors you could integrate for the first two, and you could pre splice your model if you wanted it resized. 

Note what if there was already a model on the print bed?

You could sense that somehow too, my first choice would be machine vision to check if there is anything there that isn’t normally. I think this would be the most accurate. 

But you could accomplish this with a much cheaper and simpler sensor like a proximity sensor, or a rangefinder going over the bed level. 

The octoprint API again would be able to stream you a live stream of the print, and when its finished it could send the online service a trigger that the print is finished, along with a photo of the completed print the moment it was finished printing. 

It could even go as far as sending the recorded time lapse over to YouTube and linking it in the completed email!

This would let the user review the print and check for defects / print problems to some degree, so they could instantly email the printer owner if something went wrong and request a re print. 

This could save a lot of time and speed up the process. 

#tramthoughts

Hi,

Ive wanted to do this for a while, and ive started making a bit of progress. I was hoping I could finish this tonight but it doesnt look like thats going to happen.

 

Following the guidance of the write up over here: https://github.com/zeroflow/ESPAircon

 

Ive come up with the following data from my A/C remote:
ON: 9E00000A
OFF: 8E00000A

16C: 9A00000A
17C: 9A80000A
18C: 9A40000A
19C: 9AC0000A
20C: 9A20000A
21C: 9A00000A
22C: 9A60000A
23C: 9AE0000A
24C: 9A10000A
25C: 9A90000A
26C: 9A50000A
27C: 9AD0000A
28C: 9A30000A
29C: 9AB0000A
30C: 9A70000A

LOWFAN: 9E00000A
MEDFAN: 9600000A
HIFAN: 9A00000A

AC: 9A60000A
DHM: 5A60000A
FAN: DA60000A

SWN: 9A00000A
NOSW: 9800000A

 

 

The end piece is 0000A, this seems to remain constant on mine. It might have data in it for timer, but I don’t care about that. The vent swinging data seems to change the same bits as the fan speed data, but to an alternate value.

I’ve been reading through DL_Aircon.cpp for a while now and I cant grasp what goes where..

Now, I can see the patterns, not that I understand them :’)

I was never good at understanding things like this..

I need someone to help me in understanding how to get my data into the code so that I can get it uploaded to my ESP8266 and test it.

I might hit up Ruiqi Mao again… hmmm

http://lewys.eu/dev/DL_Aircon.cpp

This is the file the data has to go into…

Using a readily available micro laser projector, a fan or two and a 3d printed part to create a small air curtain 

Add in a smoke generator of some sort to give a projection surface and a small portable hologram generator thing can be built, note to self, give it a shot some time