Tablet Mount

Since getting my Handibot, I've already modded it a little...

I started out using an old laptop in the shop with it, and while that ran the machine fine it was a bit much to have around. I ended up ordering a Dell Venue Pro tablet, and a small mount from Amazon that is designed to hold it in the car. This is the mount that I got:

[www.amazon.com]

Here is my tablet mounted on my Handibot, it's really firmly mounted so it's very easy to tap on, and the whole operation is removable without tools (aside from the sticky disk you put on for the suction cup to adhere to)



For the rest of the mods I did, check out this album (these include a magnetic bluetooth keyboard holder, and a few cable guides I printed on my Makerbot.

[plus.google.com]

Just having the tablet mounted makes it so much easier to use, and having a place to put the bluetooth keyboard down is nice because I don't have to worry about hitting it accidentally when I leave it on the bench.

Eric,

That looks like a great setup. Where did you find a micro usb 2.0 to Type B adapter. I have been looking around on Amazon and can't seem to locate one.

Chad

That connector is just a USB OTG connector like this one...

[www.amazon.com]

Ahh yes. I was thinking about the wrong connection. Thanks.

No problem!

Eric, is that keyboard working well for you? If so, source?
Thanx
M

I do like it. I can do a lot on the tablet screen, but sometimes it's just better to have a keyboard at hand for jogging the axes around and stuff.

I got it from here:

[www.amazon.com]

Oh @ less than 25 bucks it's a done deal, thanks for the source.

Reallly cool. I think I want to get a tablet as well. Rightnow I am doing it through VMWARE fusion on the mac, gets a bit cumbersome.

Thank you.

I highly recommend going the tablet route, I was using my Mac in the shop when I first started out, and a laptop becomes a pain after only a few jobs

I bought the same tablet and keyboard and they are great. I use the keyboard almost exclusively.

I spent last weekend learning some of the Shopbot control software command line shortcuts. I would highly recommend that others who are not familiar with them download the guide on the Shopbot website. I find them to be a lot faster for jogging around and setting up jobs.

HI Eric

can you let me know the exact specs of your tablet ?
there seems to be a lot of options i like your setup and think i want to take the same route

Hi Eric,

I picked up one of those tablets from local costco and have been trying to use it, it seems to work great. It is a bit less handibot related, but I have a question about the tablet it self. I do not know if this is Win 8 issue, my particular tablet issue or what, but it is incredibly hard to do anything via touch screen that requires precision. Like clicking a link on a website or closing a chrome tab takes a dozed pokes and prods. I have not used Windows for a while but my general impression that it does not work well with touch. I just wanted to see if you experienced this and perhaps I have to enable some setting or something.

I got the keyboard as well and I know you use that, which should hopefully make things easier, but sometimes it is convenient to do it on screen, but it seems almost impossible.

Other then that I think it is nice setup.

So as far as windows 8 being hard to touch... I totally agree. My suggestion would be to get into the settings and mess around with the accessibility settings. I was able to make the text larger as well as the maximize and minimize buttons.

In terms of tablets... I have the Dell venue Pro 8. While it performs well its big drawback is a single USB plug.

The big downside to the Dell is that if you use a hub of a splitter you cannot get it to charge and use a device at the same time. This means that you're limited by the run time of the battery which fortunately is really good. I was able to get around this by wiring up a special box that tricks the Dell into charging with my Handibot connected.. Not a good solution though.

On another note.. Make sure you head into your power settings and disable any sleep modes or screen savers. If the tablet goes to sleep in the middle of a cut you'll lose your spot.

Lastly I'll be with the shopbot team today at a show and we have tons of tablets on hand. I'll play with them and report my findings back here..

Boris :
I have the Dell and keyboard as well and consider it the ideal setup for now.
Just one day of running it that way and love using the keyboard with it in advanced mode.
For those times when I still need to do something from the screen I find the magnifier to be a big help. I need to add the icon to the desktop.
Also let me reiterate what Eric said about settings, go ahead and mod this before first session. I had it go to sleep in the middle of a cut!

Ok all, I was at JLC with the ShopBot team last week and I got to play around with a number if different tablets.

My take away: Make sure you get one with good USB ports. The Dell Venue I have does work well as a tablet, but there are few big drawbacks:

1. It doesn't charge when connected to USB. This tablet has one USB port, and even when you use a hub it will not charge while it's connected to is. This means that your Handibot will only run as long as the tablet has a charge. Fortunately the battery lasts a very long time. I found a way to hot wire it to make it charge, but that method is not recommended, at all.

2. The USB port on this tablet doubles as an HDMI port. Bottom line: The USB cable sits very loose in the plug. This makes it far too easy to knock the plug out which could ruin a job that you're cutting. My solution was to print out a USB cable holder on my Makerbot, not something that everyone has access to.

So, if you're looking at a tablet, a lot of the other ones I saw had solid USB ports, and could charge at the same time as running the handibot. Some the tablets out there has full size ports, which was really nice. Pay attention to these things when getting a tablet. I may be buying a new one soon so that I can run my machine all day if I end up cutting a lot of material in one day.

Eric, I have been following your posts for a while, thanks for sharing all the ideas. Took the plunge and replicated most of your setup with the Dell Venue and tablet mount. I just got SB3 installed last night and made the spindle move, ready to start having some fun this weekend.

I have to admit that using Windows on a small tablet takes some getting used to. In particular hitting the small command buttons on the SB3 console is touchy, especially the little tick box to switch from move/cut to preview.

Any advice on tweaking the table settings? I already have the display set at 125%, and I can't find an option to do more than that.

Thanks!

RMW

Richard :
The magnifer let's you blow stuff way up, mandatory for my barely prehensile lobster claw hands! 200% works nicely.

I have the same problem and find it easier to use the on-screen keyboard. You can access all ShopBot commands from the keyboard...for instance the "SM" command puts you in Move mode, and the "SP" command in Preview mode.

Bill

A couple more thoughts on TABLET INPUT ...

Unfortunately, the implementation of "touch" on the tablet does not let you hold down one of the little buttons on the yellow ShopBot Keypad (there might be a change to the type-matic function to fix it, but I haven't found it). So ... One option is to make use of the Keypad via a wireless keyboard. I have a small one that is a bit different than Eric's, but both seem to work well. A second option is to use the Arrow Keys on the On-Screen keyboard in Windows (per Bill's suggestion above). I find this easiest when Win8 is configured to show the full keyboard (you might need to enable this in settings; then select it in the keyboard options).

Even then, with the displays that I have seen there is no Page-UP; Page-DN to move the Z-axis. We've tried to make the situation by configuring things so that ALT-upArrow and ALT-dnArrow will move the Z and replace the paging keys. That will make the your tablet a little easier to use.

For those who end up with a tablet that only has a single small USB plug through which you also charge the device, there is a little splitter gizmo you can buy that will let you do both at the same time -- but these connectors usually have a little trickiness to them. First, the order that you plug things in determines whether the charging function will be initialized, so check to make sure your charging indicator comes on. Second, if you unplug anything or shutdown the tablet, you may have to plug things back in again in the correct sequence.

Ted Hall, ShopBot

Mark: I agree on the magnifier for most uses, but in the case of switching from preview to move/cut it still does not work for me. The little tick boxes still don't register the input for some reason. Overall I find the touch interface on the Venue to be finicky, not sure if this is specific to the Dell or common to all Windows tablets.

Bill: those commands work great. I am just starting to immerse myself into SB3 and found the command reference shortcut PDF. Now I just need a quiet weekend to fiddle with it.

Ted: Can you provide details on the splitter you refer to? I did some searching and none of the ones I found state they will provide power, there were reference to "shorted pins" but nothing I could really grasp. If you found a particular splitter that works I would like to try it myself.

Thanks all!

RMW

With the Dell Venue 8 that I have, you need to short a few pins and run a resistor between two of the charging wires. I built a little box that does it, but honestly it's a pain. If I had known that this particular tablet works this way, I would have gotten a different one.

I'd be happy to share my design with you for the little charging box I built, but if you have the opportunity I'd go with a tablet with multiple USB ports, or at least one that can charge with a hub...

I waded through 50 pages of forum posts on Dell's site to find the solution to charging and using a USB device at the same time.

On that splitter thing ...

It turns out things are getting more complex. I believe that most of those splitters designed for OTG were intended to do the job ... but I just got a new Acer W4 (I had liked the W3 in the past because of the separate charge port) to discover that not only did it not have the charge port, but that it did not work correctly with the splitter. So, I'm thinking there is a lot of variation we are going to need to sort out here.

For the splitter ... I have a couple that have had names like "Micro USB Host OTG ..." typically bought from Amazon ...
On my Asus tablet that is in front of me at the moment, if am running and watching the Desktop in Win8 AND I plug in the charger power directly to the micro-USB on the tablet, the power indicator in the tray indicates that I am connected and charging (as it should). If I unplug, plug in the splitter and then plug the charger into the splitter micro-USB connector -- NOTHING ... there is no indication that I am charging and there is 0 current drawn from the charger.

HOWEVER, if I shut down the tablet via >> Settings > Power > Shutdown, from the right side slide out (I find you need to allow these tablets a minute or two to actually, fully shut down, or they will drive you crazy) and THEN PLUG the power in via the splitter, and THEN START windows. You find you are now charging. And, you can insert a flash drive or hub into the other outlet on the splitter and it will be recognized. In my experience it does not work this way on all tablets ... and I'm not yet sure how to get the W4 reliably charging. There may be variations on workable sequences. I have also heard that a momentary jump of the data lines with the right resistor can start charging, but this may all take some sorting out ... I can tell you that when you are charging directly on the Asus, about 1.2Amps are drawn, but when charging via the splitter only .9A. ???

Sorry not to have a better story yet.

Ted Hall, ShopBot

It seems that a lot of these tablets aren't meant to charge and be plugged into USB... I wonder if there is a better solution we could come up with...

Perhaps this?

[www.ebay.com]

If I am reading that right, it makes any devices plugged into that hub accessible via Bluetooth.. Not sure if that's a good idea with the way that Shopbot software needs to stream data to the control board...

Maybe there is a way we could have a Wifi Shield on the Handibot... So the Handibot would create a Wifi network that one would attach the tablet too. That would solve it in all cases because you would no longer need to have the tablet hard wired into the machine... What do you think Ted? Can we have that shipping next week?

I found a couple of potential options for charging the Venue 8 Pro and using USB at the same time:

[www.kickstarter.com]

[www.vener8.net]

I personally haven't tried these, I am still using my own home baked solution, but these may be better options for us...