SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Adafruit has released step by step instructions to build your own 10" Raspberry Pi 2 based computer.
From the article:
This project takes a DIY approach with no compromises in cost. The cost of this build easily goes over low budget DIY projects, but it's [meant] to be [a] premium build. It will be used for monitoring and wirelessly controlling a farm of printers. A dedicated linux box with a decent sized screen could cost about the same amount, but when the process of building a project is more meaningful than getting the cheapest deal, this sorta thing becomes a trophy item as well as a functioning utility. Also, we can mount it to anything and design custom brackets to adjust it in any configuration, and that's pretty darn cool.
A PDF of the instructions is also available.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Tramii on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:59PM
1 x HDMI 4 Pi - 10.1" Display $144.95
Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B $39.95
2 x PowerBoost 1000 Charger $39.90
2 x Lithium Ion Battery Pack $59.00
1 x Type A Machines Series 1 3D Printer $2,995.00
1 x Filament for 3D Printers $46.00
So unless you already have a 3D printer lying around, it's going to cost you at least $350 once you buy all the extra cables and switches. If you like 99% of the population do not already own a 3D printer, it's more like $3350. And people say my Macbook Pro is overpriced!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:39PM
USe a 3d printer at a hackerspace
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:42PM
When I was a young sprout, I spent some time working for Dahlgren Engraving Company, of San Francisco.
Dahlgren's innovation was to mount a rotating cutter to an X-Y offset mechanism so that he could position his cutter head at any location on an X-Y grid. He then added a computer (we're talking CP/M, and DOS - it was in the early 1980s) to control the X-Y positioning and the cutter up-and-down operation, and, voila, he had a machine that could do repetitious things, precisely and quickly and without error.
A 3D printer is nothing more than this 2D infrastructure, with a third dimension added, and the cutter head replaced by a nozzle of some sort, and a valve, to control flow, and maybe some heating elements, to keep solid things from solidifying. That's it.
The secret to all this is in stepper motors.
Stepper motors are motors that rotate a precise amount in response to an electrical impulse. If they do not not receive a properly shaped and adequate pulse, they do not move. stepper motors provide repeatability and precision.
Once you have acquired stepper motors, the ability to control them, and axes upon which to mount them, you can build pretty much anything - a lathe, a mill, a CNC machine, a 3D printer, even a whole frickin' assembly line.
My local community college has some courses on 3D design. I've been thinking about taking a class because I think that is the future - and because it could lead into another career, at the age of 50+ - something I have been interested in, for quite a long time.
Naturally, this would need to be at my own expense - the current government would prefer to see intelligent and productive people wither and die on unemployment, or welfare, rather than see them provided with a safety net that allowed continuing education and investment in the fundamental infrastructure that is the United States population - nope, the new owners of the United States figure they can outsource that population thing, too, there's no lack of population.
Try searching for '3d printer rail' or 'stepper motor'.
Have fun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:54PM
Naturally, this would need to be at my own expense - the current government would prefer to see intelligent and productive people wither and die on unemployment, or welfare, rather than see them provided with a safety net that allowed continuing education and investment in the fundamental infrastructure that is the United States population - nope, the new owners of the United States figure they can outsource that population thing, too, there's no lack of population.
FTFY.
(Actually, I am the author of those words. I posted them as 'Plain Old Text', but the parsing mechanism filtered them out of the 'Preview'. So I recomposed them using HTML macros 'ampersand less-than' and 'ampersand greater-than' and that was rendered correctly, for some reason - even though it was still marked 'Plain Old Text' - so I posted it; but then, the pseudo-tags didn't show up. So I replied to myself, as a sort of a bug report. I trust the system maintainers will see this.)
(Score: 1) by Illop on Friday August 28 2015, @02:42AM
You are 100% correct. With a few weeks reading up on pulse width modulation and a few other bits and bobs you can make a WHATEVER cutter/additive shapper. I recently hacked an old commodore plotter into a vinyl/sticker cutter with an arduino, some code, a stepper motor, and a bit of soldering, and a lot of patience. It can be done on the cheap if you don't count time as money.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by richtopia on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:53PM
"no compromises in cost"
If your going to do it right, mind as well spend the money. Now I can have nice hardware stuck in a crappy plastic box, and a spare 3D printer left over!
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:34PM
no reason to waste time and money on 3d printing. laser cutting is much cheaper and can do the same kind of work (more or less), without the oops and gotchas that 3d printers (cheaper ones) have. you can't just print and walk away; things often go wrong in 3d printing and you are now out time and materials and your time window may even be over if its a shared hackspace.
the box is flat, mostly. I fail to see what the 3d benefit is, here.
then again, I fail to see how newsworthy it is to send more traffic to adafruit when they are simply doing normal everyday things (for them). nothing newsworthy here, guys. many more DIY'ers do more interesting and inventive stuff than limor, but why does she get all the news articles when there's really nothing new at her shop?
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:50PM
At least it's stealing some of the Arduino mindshare... the more people we can move off of Arduino into Raspberry Pi, the better.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:22PM
the more people we can move off of Arduino into Raspberry Pi
Actually I'd say both.
The Pi is pointless. For every use I see it promoted for it is either overkill or underpowered. As an embedded microcontroller competing with the AVR (called Arduino by the vulgar low info types who fall for marketing hype) and similar actual microcontrollers it is overpriced overkill, like hitting gnats with a jackhammer. For actual computing tasks it is woefully underpowered even when compared to current offerings in the same price range.
To be fair, the first Pi would have indeed been revolutionary had it shipped on schedule but after almost two years of delay the incredible hype machine they had unleashed had already inspired more competent shops to actually ship better products. Almost exactly the same thing as happened with the XO Laptop, it was hyped so hard and then almost became a Duke Nukem Forever by taking forever to actually ship a product, the hype had already inspired the whole Netbook movement and had rendered them obsolete by the time they finally shipped.
The 'Arduino' is just marketing hype around what would be a bog standard reference implementation of an AVR microcontroller except they 'accidentally' hosed the PCB and ended up with a misshappen thing that only their branded addon boards can fit without serious rework combined with an aggressive marketing campaign to hipsters in the 'maker scene'. The software side is just as bad, they stole Wiring and tarted it up just a bit to appeal to the arts set and rebranded it. If you want an AVR board, and there is a lot of reasons to, but buy one without the Arduino branding and you get a better product at a far better price.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 28 2015, @03:15PM
after almost two years of delay the incredible hype machine they had unleashed had already inspired more competent shops to actually ship better products...
...for four times or more the price
TFTFY
Some years later you can get similar products at a mere twice the price or even a few slightly inferior products at the same price. But.. this is some years later.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by morgauxo on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:13PM
99% of what population doesn't have access to a 3d printer?
If you don't own your own you can use one at a local hackerspace.
Is there no local hackerspace for you? Before you say so I'd like to point out that if you actually want a thing you should be willing to travel a bit. If your entire world revolves around a few city blocks then it is not the internet's fault that you are almost a shut-in. I drive about 45 minutes myself. If it were for a one time project that I really wanted I might consider going as far as a few hours. Don't have a car? Big city people can substitute public transportation for driving. Country people... without cars... how do you survive? Chase down deer on foot and kill them with sticks?
Still think 90% have no 3d printer access?
How about libraries? Does your town or any nearby town have a 3d printer at it's library? That is getting more common.
I keep hearing rumors about shipping centers and office supply stores having 3d printing services too.
Still no 3d printer access?
You are on the internet. The internet is full of 3d printing services that will print your item for you.
I'm sure there is a significant population outside of 1st world countries that where people really have no feasable way to 3d print something. But 90% of the population? The percentage of people with no 3d printer access certainly isn't as high as 90% on this planet!
Done bitching yet?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:18PM
I'll get downmodded for this because it's off-topic, but damn, the tone of your post makes me really wish we had a "smug douchebag" mod. It's a perfect example of how not to make a point.
You might be right with your basic premise, but the way you presented it is terrible. You're making a lot of assumptions about everybody else based on yourself, concluding that obviously everyone else has the same motivations and situation, and then topping it off with a gigantic pile of smug in a way that turns a rebuttal into an asinine, hostile attack.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 28 2015, @03:04PM
I spend a lot of time over on Hackaday too. I see a lot of great articles there where somebody has built something or other along with all the details a person would need to replicate the build. Then you get 20 unapreciative comments complaining that they don't have access to the tools and wining that there are too many article authors that just assume others have access. It's annoying.
My point is that the vast majority of them probably DO have access. It just isn't sitting there in front of their faces and they aren't considering the possiblities. I really hate those comments because they feed other's ideas of "I Can't" when we should be telling people "You Can!". The possibilities these days are absolutely amazing! But so many people don't even know it. Thus.. the vitriol of my post.
I'm really not sure what you think I am assuming about a person's motivations. I am stating that it is false to claim that 99% or even 'most' people do not have access to the tools. It very well may be distant or difficult enough of access that it does take bit of motivation to complete a particular project. So what? I'm not assuming that every person IS motivated.
If a person isn't motivated then that project just isn't for them. They aren't missing anything that they actually wanted very badly! Maybe some other 3d printed project will come about that the person does really want. When that day comes I hope they know that they DO have access to a 3d printer one way or another.
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Friday August 28 2015, @04:11PM
I am stating that it is false to claim that 99% or even 'most' people do not have access to the tools.
Here's the thing: no one has claimed that 99% of people do not have access to the tools.
Now, if you follow the instructions exactly, you would literally spend over $3000. The PDF literally lists all the required parts, along with direct links to purchase them! Adafruit is clearly hoping to sell a few kits and was using this guide as an advertisement. But of course, you can easily make a few tweaks and lower the price dramatically. This was quickly pointed out by others.
Next time, instead of going off on some sort of crazy straw man rant, you should try to carefully read what was posted. No one was claiming that this was impossible task. No one was complaining about it being too hard to trying to discourage others from trying it. I was simply poking fun at an obvious attempt to drum up some extra business by Adafruit.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 28 2015, @05:45PM
OK
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:22PM
You could make the case with flat sheets of plastic, a Dremel, a hobby knife, some files, sandpaper and adhesive. If you don't want plastic, you could use wood - birch plywood sheets for example. Or aluminum sheets. Sheet steel would work. Or a combination of those. Hand-made computer cases are old hat when you get down to it.
The world didn't begin with a 3D printer and people used to build things without them. It just took a bit of skill instead of a lot of money.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Friday August 28 2015, @03:07PM
I completely agree!
But.. I went the other direction because I was annoyed that someone is telling people that might not know better that they can't access a 3d printer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:36PM
That case is not that hard to make by hand. They used a 3D printer because they have them handy and it also helps to sell them, but a Dremel and some patience will get the same results.
Let's not forget that people built precision mechanism watches a century ago when there were no 3Dprinters around.