Its_All.Lost
Because hope just breeds everlasting misery…

Gulfcoast Robotics Carriage Cable Chain

Gulfcoast Robotics Carriage Cable Chain

The Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 comes with cable chains on the X and Z-axis, but not the Y-axis. I have no idea why. It has been on my list of to-do items to add a cable chain to the Y-axis, but I have just never gotten around to do it. About a year ago or so I managed to get around to printing the cable chain links and mounts but I never installed any of it. Fast forward to present day and I find myself wanting to tinker with the printer and have been thinking of new upgrades for it. Thats when I spotted the chain that I had printed in a box. I originally printed the chain to mount to the printer and to the stock carriage, but I no longer have that carriage. Now I have a carriage from Gulfcoast Robotics, so what I already printed doesn’t fit.

Off to Tinkercad!

I have previously designed a handle for the new Gulfcoast carriage that just slips on, I added a zip-tie to keep it from accidentally falling off and it works great! So I figured I could take that designed and remix it to work for me as a contact point for the heatbed cable chain. A day or two and 6 prints later and I have a slip-on cable chain for the Maker Select. I remixed a rear frame mount so that no screws are needed, just slide the piece over the bracket. The same goes for the bed carriage, just slide it on. I did add a zip-tie to make sure it doesn’t pop off, because it is a pain to put on. I used the existing chain links that I had already printed and it all came together.

The one thing I did not think about was the offset that the chain would have. The original mount that uses screws mounts to the same place as the Y-axis stepper motor and this is centered with the bed and the wiring. Adding a cable chain here you are going to get a nice straight line. I am using a slip-on rear mount so I cannot center it due to the stepper being in the way. Luckily I had two offset links printed from back then. Like it was meant to be. I still need to print one more but it works fine it just looks a little odd because of the way the chain is offset.

 

Maker Select Gulfcoast Robotics Heatbed Cable Chain (my cable chain mounts) https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4644050

The cable chain links to make the chain https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1060522

Y-axis cable chain mount for MP Maker Select (the thing I based my remix off of) https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2221459

 

 

Neopixel Stoplight

3D Printed Neopixel Stoplight

I had been looking for a STL of a stoplight to print for about a year now. I wanted to use the colors of the stoplight to signal to my younger kids when it was ok to wake up in the morning, and when it was time to go back to sleep. My ideal was that I could use Node-Red running on the home server via MQTT to regulate when the stoplight changed colors. Thingiverse’s search is horrible and you could spend days there and not actually get what you are looking for so I never found one that would work. The other day I was searching for some reference STLs of something and accidentally came across a STL for a stoplight. Not one, but three (two remixed from the other).

The first one looked great, good size and decent design. Except it was designed for LEDs and an ATTiny to drive its sequence. The second was a remix of the first. The third was another remix that extended the back casing. The remixes made things easier to print but still relied on LEDs and an ATTiny of sorts. This was a great starting point for me. I have no problems modifying STLs for my purposes. I like to use Tinkercad, not very good with Fusion 360. I downloaded the files and started my own remix. I took elements from all three versions of the stoplight.

I modified the back case to allow a Lolin v3 to be able to mount to it. Then I had to create a cover for the Lolin. I took the front from the original thing, I preferred its one piece to the remixes four piece but I filled in the slot for the little switch. I used the LED panes/covers from the original, unmodified. This was great, I had a front and back a cover, LED panes and the inlay to hold the LEDs. So I printed it all out and went to work. First things first, I tested the LEDs. Like I thought, the LEDs I have are not the super bright ones and running off of the Lolins 3v they just didn’t have enough brightness to shine through very well. No super bright LEDs but I do have some WS2812 neopixels. I hooked one up to test and yes they were perfect. So I modified the LED inlay to hold three neopixels.

I wanted to be able to control the stoplight via MQTT from my server running Node-Red. I used the neopixel example from Adafruit and the default Pubsubclient example for an ESP8266. Mashed the two together and I was able to change the colors on the fly with no problems. I showed off the stoplight to a friend of mine and he loved it. He wanted one for himself, but he doesn’t have a server or anything that runs MQTT. No problem, the Lolin can handle web GUIs. A quick google for a web server on an ESP turned up a nice little tutorial on how to turn on and off GPIO pins from a web GUI. BAM! I took that code and mashed it up with the neopixel code I already had an I was able to get a nice little web page displayed to change the colors of the stoplight. This is awesome.

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