Hello to those interested in developing Handibot Apps.
Our long awaited "Introduction to Handibot App Development" is now available on our
Github site or from the
Handibot site. Note that the document is a conceptual one that provides an overview of how we are thinking about Handibot App Development and what we are working on in terms of the hardware and software system that underlies it.
As described in earlier documents, the system builds on the evolving, core G2 motion system. This is an open source system that we believe will become a new standard for digital fabrication motion control. G2 is being developed from TinyG by the Synthetos team. It is not yet complete, but pretty far along and we are running tools with it. To G2, we are adding a fabrication "Engine" that provides the API for full control and monitoring of a tool and management of tool-path files. On top of that, we are developing a "Linker" module that will find and link to local Handibots using wired or wireless options from a wide variety of devices. These modules are components of what we consider a general purpose Digital Fabrication Motion Platform (FabMo for short). The functionality of the modules is not usable yet, but you can view their current status in repos on the ShopBot
Github site. Our goal is to provide resources, libraries, and examples that simplify using the functions of these modules for Apps.
We appreciate that it has taken a while to get this all mapped out. While we look forward to input and contributions from the community as the software platform develops, we wanted to make sure that we had developed a comprehensive description of our plans for the hardware and software platform and details of how it would all work, before laying it out.
The introductory document also includes and example App that runs with the current Sb3 software to illustrate the Handibot App concept. Please appreciate that this is not intended to illustrate the new API or SDK but only to suggest how a Handibot App will need to generally interact with a user, create a tool-path file, and pass it to the tool. We hope to provide a couple of different simulation options for App developers while we await the prototype hardware.
[Note: I'll post this in a couple of threads where it is relevant.]
Ted Hall, ShopBot Tools