Hi Tim,
Forgive me if I do a little copy and pasting here ... and also into the new forum area, so all interested in software development can follow.
Quote
Tim Flugum
Does this mean we handibotters are going to need to replace the guts of our handibots at somepoint to be "up-to-date" on hardware like we had to do with the new base for the large material jig?
I have no problem with this. It is actuallly pretty exciting. In the interest of transparency and "open-whatever", I learned in the military, "Bad news does not get better with time!"
I look forward to learning more about the guts of the machine as I teach math and physics. I am not truly a programmer, however, my goal is to have my students using the handibot as a true 3D graphing machine. Instead of creating a 3D surface in virtual space, it is much better to create the actual plot in handibot real space. Students are very demanding. I have it working right now with Microsoft Excel to handibot, but it is a bit of a stretch.
YES ... on replacement. We've tried to be clear all along (see discussion of "roadmap" in ShopBot and Handibot developer areas) that the ShopBot Contol Card is a bit of a legacy item and does not have the micro-controller power for going forward, either for Handibots or ShopBots in general. However, the new Control Card will have the same pin-outs as the existing card, will be very modular, and will just plug right in to the existing CNC board on your Handibot (the larger board with drivers, isolation, etc) [and we will make new cards available to Handibot owners at cost]. It will be backwards compatible with all ShopBots and Handibots.
The new Control Card will be a 32bit ARM similar to the Atmel SAM on the Arduino DUE (if not the same; the DUE is the development board for all our current work). As described in the "
Introduction to Handibot App Development", G2 will reside on the Control Card and provide the Core Motion substrate for the new system.
In addition, we will be adding a small SBC (with basic and minimal specs, such as a Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone) to provide for management, connectivity, and additional features of a Digital Fabrication Motion Platform (FabMo for short). Originally, we had hoped to do all of our higher level work on the Control Card uC. But as time went by, we realized that by the time we added additional hardware for connectivity and storage, and developed the required functionality, it would be more expensive and less straightforward than just adding the SBC. The SBC, in the end will make for a much more developer-friendly system and has allowed us to already be pretty far along in terms of the overall FabMo platform now emerging on the Github site. So yes, we have added a bit of hardware here to what we had planned ... but in the end it will probably not add much to the cost but have a huge impact on flexibility.
Tim, I look forward to hearing more about your 3D graphing project with the Handibot. I think there would probably be some interest here (and on the
100kSchools website) in learning about what you are up to ... even in the Excel stages.
Ted Hall, ShopBot Tools