Safemaking with the Bambu P1S

somewhere safe to put all the money I haven’t got

One of the great things about having the Bambu printer is that I seem to be able to decide to print something and then just print it. Even if the thing is large. Today I had a go at printing this bank vault. It just worked.

These are the main parts

I was expecting a bunch of problems and a ten hour wait. After all, I’ve been printing for a very long time. What I got was all the important bits printed before lunch.

The lock contains a surprisngly complicated latch

I had the whole thing built by mid afternoon. The design cost me a couple of quid or so and it was very well worth it. I even got instructions telling me how to assemble the different parts.

Raspberry Pi Popup in Leeds

I bought a new mousemat too

We were in Leeds today Christmas shopping. I was really pleased to see a Raspberry Pi popup in Victoria Gate. We went in and had a look around. I tried to impress the staff by showing them my by-line in a copy of HackSpace magazine they had on sale. I think it worked. They did give me a free sticker.

The store was excellent. The staff were great and it was lovely to be able to take a proper look at some devices I’ve only ever seen in pictures up to now. I hope they open it again.

Network testing - half way there

Took some robots into the university today and introduced them to the campus network. The good news is that they managed to connect using the passwords I’d been supplied with. The bad news is that the MQTT connection (the way that commands are sent to the robots) didn’t work. Oh well, I think a port in the university firewall will need to be opened…

Rehabilitating Robots

“Old Red” goes back a way…

Spent a big chunk of today upgrading the firmware in the robots and getting them ready for robot rugby next week. The are going to be connected to the Hull University Wi-Fi network so that they can be controlled in the game.

Using the second serial port connection on the ESP8266

Perhaps not many of you have had problems with the serial port connections on your ESP8266 devices. But I’m going to write this down anyway. Here’s the problem:

The ESP8266 has one and a half serial ports. But I want my ESP8266 to use serial connections to two different devices:

• I want to be able to connect my computer to the ESP8266 so that I can load programs into the device and set configuration options.

• I want the ESP8266 to be able to talk to a Pixelbot robot and tell it what to do.

Connecting the ESP8266 serial signals to the robot processor breaks the serial connection to the computer. So if I want to connect my robot to the my PC I have to unplug connections on the robot itself. Which is tiresome. So instead I’m using a little know feature of the ESP8266. It can swap the serial connections to different processor pins. So I can connect the robot serial signals to GPIO 13 (TX) and GPIO 15 (RX) and, once my program has started running I can call a function to swap the serial signals over to these pins.

Serial.swap();

After swap has been called code in the robot using the serial port will send messages out of the alternate pins. When the robot starts up it looks for messages on the original connection and if it doesn’t see anything it swaps the connection. This makes it much easier to use. This is the kind of kludge I’m proud of.

Remember what this is?

So many buttons, so little time

Just bought a super-cheap camcorder. The low price is reflected by the lack of battery and the fact that when you press the transport buttons the wrong thing happens. But it works. Now I can go back and explore old videos made over thirty years ago.

If they still work.

Robot Rugby is coming

Do you want to be able to play rugby with robots? I do. To that end I’ve spent the day building a web backend for a system that will host a rugby game and allow players to drop program code into their robotic rugby players and tell them what to do.

I’m not sure how much fun it would be to play rugby with robots. But I’ve had great fun which I think is perhaps the most important thing here…

Snow Joke

We had some snow today. Not much, but enough to send me out into the cold shovelling first thing in the morning. I was very proud that our drive was clear and everybody in the rest of the street had snow on theirs.

Then the sun came out and all the snow melted away before lunchtime.

HULLCS50 is a thing

Official celebration light. I’ll put the plans on thingiverse so you can make one of your own and link it to the event server

The Department of Computer Science in the University of Hull will be 50 years old soon. We’ll be celebrating this event at the university over the weekend of the 10th-12th May 2024. We are going to have an anniversary Three Thing Game, Welcome Party Redux, Robot Rugby and guest speakers. Plus campus tours and chipspice. Put the date in your diary and keep watching the skies (or my blog) for more news.

Comicon with the Mamiya

Black and white dark side

I carried my carefully weighed camera all around Comicon today. It was great. Pro tip: Check your coat in at the cloakroom so that you don’t have to carry it all round the show. It will be the best two pounds you spend on the day.

I took a few pictures. I’m particular pleased with this shot of “The Northern Vader” and a couple of his chums. I was using a large flash on a bracket to the side of the camera. I think it worked very well.

Casual Buzz

There were some cries of surprise when the flash went off in a manner rather similar to a nuclear explosion. But I’d already got the photograph by then….

Dalek central control

I’ve got some more shots in the camera. I’ll develop those when I’ve finished the film off.

Heading to Birmingham

Tomorrow is Comicon at the NEC in Birmingham. In the olden days we used to drive there and back in one day. But nowadays we tend to arrive a day early and spend a night in a hotel. With that in mind I can strongly recommend the Premier Inn Solihull (Hockley Heath M42). The staff are lovely, the rooms are big and clean the meal out was great. Show day tomorrow.

Weighing cameras

Spent this afternoon weighing camera bags to help me decide which to take to Comicon tomorrow. Which is in no way sad.

Redphone in HackSpace magazine

I’ve bought another phone so that I can try to make them call each other

Issue 73 of HackSpace magazine has my red phone article in it. This is where I take an old telephone, rip out all the electronics and replace them with a Raspberry Pi. I then have something which can call me up and say menacing things to me..

Picobox tall now availalble

One of my most popular models

By popular request (someone asked for it) I’ve made a version of my PICO box which fits a PICO with an expansion board on top.

Pixelbot Photography

The red lines are produced by the leds on the motor driver board

I spent a very happy hour this evening taking long exposures of a pixelbot bouncing off the walls. When the robot stopped I shone a torch on it for the last bit of lighting. I’m quite pleased with how it came out.

AS an added bonus, the mole wrench is now very easy to find.

A while back I mentioned my sinking feeling, caused by a failing gas support in my chair. The chair company have sent me a replacement, which is nice of them. However, it has proved to be impossible to fit, what with the broken part having welded itself into position. I’ve come up with a solution though. My chair now holds its position perfectly.

Bambu printer top tip: pick the right buildplate

If your plate is gold (which is most likely) it will be the Textured PEI plate)

I’m getting to really like the Bambu P1S. It’s unlike printers I’ve had before. With those the very first prints I got with them turned out to be some of the best prints they ever made. With the Bambu it seems that the more you use it, the better it gets.

This is the first printer I’ve had with swappable build plates. They are held on with magnets but you can pop them on and off - especially useful for removing prints. There are also a few different types of plate, and herein lies a problem that I (and lots of other folks) had. My first prints looked good, but kept coming off the print bed or curling up at the corners.

It turns out that the print is supplied with a Textured PEI Plate, but the default setting for the Bambu slicer is the Cool Plate. So the temperature of the print bed was far too low. A peek at the forums revealed that lots of other folks have had this problem. So - if you are lucky enough to get one of these machines, make sure that you make the build plate match the slicer for best results.

Too much voltage is bad for you

the first PICO powered Pixelbot

I’ve not made a brand-new Hull Pixelbot for a while. Today I made a new one which is powered by a Raspberry Pi PICO. I usually power the robot from four (or sometimes five) AA batteries. This gets me around 6 volts. I did that today with the new robot and it failed to work. It turns out that the Raspberry Pi doesn’t like voltages much higher than 6 volts, and shows its displeasure by not working. I had scrabble around to find a set of “slightly worn” batteries to get it going.

The Bambu P1S 3D printer

Scary fast

I’ve been working quite hard recently. And rather than fritter my earnings away on fripperies like food and fuel I decided to get a new 3D printer. This is my third one. I’ve still got number one, Una the Ultimaker because she has huge sentimental value (and can still print up a storm when required). But number two, Edna the Ender, has now moved on to a new home.

I’ve been watching videos about Bambu printers for a while. I didn’t think I’d be able to afford one of their amazing X1-Carbon printers. In fact, I still can’t. Instead I’ve got myself a P1S which seems to offer all the advantages with a much smaller price tag. They also offer the very interesting AMS which can switch prints between four different filaments. I’ve wanted to try using multiple filaments in a single print job for a while, and now I get the chance to have a go.

The printer arrived yesterday and it is lovely. So far. It reminds me of one of those posh “bean to cup” coffee machines. You set it off and it makes all kinds of whizzing noises. Then some filament goes in one end and a well printed item drops out of the other. Unlike previous printers which I spent many happy (and some unhappy) hours fettling I’m kind of hoping that this one will just work and keep working. I’ve printed a “benchy” (the standard little boat design used to test these things) and it came out very well in double quick time.

I’m looking forward to printing a few more things in the future.

Great service from Niryo

The missing motor

Niryo make nice robot arms. They also support them very well. We’ve got a student project at the university using a Niryo arm. When the team came to assemble the robot they opened the box and found that one of the motors was missing. We’d no idea why this was the case, all we knew was that we suddenly had one less degree of freedom than we needed.

I emailed Niryo and they were super terrific. They asked us to send them a picture of the missing motor (an existential question that was easily resolved because we have several of their robots). They then just sent us a replacement, which was a completely amazing thing for them to do.

Thanks very much.