App Developers

I'm really looking forward to getting my Handibot. The App suggestion area looks interesting, but I'm really interested in developing code for using the Handibot rather than just suggesting ideas. Any ETA for when that info is available?

MIke - should have more information for you soon on developing code. I hopeful it'll be in the next few weeks!
J

I'm also interested in developing apps for the Handibot. One thing I am curious about is the existence of a simulator. Will the Handibot API/SDK come with some sort of simulator to test against? I'm thinking of the way iOS development via Xcode comes with a simulator for the iPhone and iPad. This allows developers to be able to develop for the platform with having to go buy the device, which can be a barrier to entry for some. Thanks for any info.

I received the download link and license # for v-carve pro for shopbot. Thanks very much for that!

V-carve pro runs programs called 'gadgets' which users can write in the Lua programming language.
Vectric provides an SDK with a language ref, code examples etc. The SDK appears to let you do anything programmatically you can do in v-carve.

I downloaded an IDE called SCite for Lua.

It all looks very cool. Documentation sort of throws you in at the deep end but not impossible.

Simulations already happen in V-Carve.

I come from a Rhino/vbscript/Grasshopper way of doing things and there is a LOT to like about V-Carve and Lua. I say that liking rhino and Grasshopper just fine.

Kind of dead around here. One thought about Lua and V-Carve and tiling.

Lua exposes pretty much everything V-Carve does to a scripting environment. However one thing it does not support is tiling, which is one of the ingredients needed to enable the handibot to handle larger profiles than 6x8 inches.

V-Carve has a tiling function which breaks down a job into smaller rectangle of nearly any dimension, so that you could, for example, design pieces of, say, a chair, lay them out on a 4'x8', specify 6"x8" tiling for the job, and V-Carve will create cutting paths for each of the 96 tiles needed.

(At this point the second ingredient, indexing, is needed. Indexing defines how you position the handibot on the 4'x8' to correspond to the "tiles" laid out by V-Carve over the job profiles. Make that "precisely correspond".)

Anyway, assuming you can index the handibot accurately, V-Carve saves each tile as a job originating at x=0, y=0. This means that you cut one 6"x8", load the next job file, index the handibot's position, and cut the next job.

One problem with the current software is that Vectric's Lua SDK does not appear to expose the tiling function. This indicates that jobs using tiling and indexing either cannot be completely run as Lua programs (because someone needs to handle tiling job output from V-Carve) or else programmers have to write their own tiling functions. This is further complicated when multiple tools are used within one job.

This (and some other details I won't get into) suggests that the current programming resources aren't quite up to making true turnkey apps. Are other things in the works?

I hate to sound like I'm complaining again, but it's disconcerting that the last post in this thread was a month ago and the last response from Shopbot themselves was late September indicating some sort of availability in "a few weeks."

As a career software engineer and digital fabrication hobbyist, I was really hoping to be able to combine my skills and passions and develop apps for the Handibot....but, as others have said, we seem stuck in suggestion mode for apps with no apparent way for anyone to actually develop them. As for tools useful to tiling and indexing, I received a response in another thread that these are "accessories" and it seems that Shopbot is waiting for end-users to take the geometries from the provided 3D models in github and generate these accessories on their own. While I'm certainly not adverse to creating my own tools, it seems like some of these "accessories" are fundamental to the practical usage of the Handibot. Additionally, since a number of these tools and fixtures for doing indexing and such have already been demonstrated in videos during the Kickstarter campaign, it doesn't seem like a stretch that these items (or at least plans) could be made available to Handibot owners.

Thanks for listening.

-Craig

Hi Craig,

We are working hard on refining the jigs and should be sharing files very soon. We wish we could simply give you the files for the proof of concept jigs we used during the filming. The reality is that we improved the Handibot base design for the production model and the early prototype jigs are not compatible with the new design.

David

I suspected that was the answer. It'd probably still be helpful to us to see those designs and use them as starting points rather than going from scratch.