The case was based on the aluminum TuxCASE for UNO 2d CAD file. The design was completed using both LibreCAD for the tangential and radius relationships, and Inkscape for general path manipulation.

The new laser engraver is up and running. One of the reason why we do our best to source equipment and material domestically is that ultimately we all need employment. While we current cannot afford employment to anyone, not even ourselves, the least we can do is to try and buy domestic whenever we can.

A new arrival to help tackle bigger and faster laser engraving and cutting projects. Various platforms from different manufacturers were evaluated. Ultimately we feel that the ULS system offers the best value, has the best local support, and is made in USA :)

A new attempt to build a 3d printer using the delta mechanical design from Blue Eagle Labs with the electronic from UltiMachine. Like the previous version, a hot plate was used to solder the surface mount components.

Sadly, the old electronic components from MakerBot were no where to be found and MakerBot has since stopped selling its electronic component to the general public. . .

A new adventure begins.

It's a bit ironic to post this just one week after mocking the Chinese government for their Orwellian annual June 4th crackdown. Yet, our allegiance is to the democratic ideals as enshrined in the US Constitution, regardless of its government.

United States Constitution, Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

A secret court with a blanket secret order targeting the entire population is an unconstitutional act.

2013 - 1989 = 1984, orwellian mathematics.

During the demo machining for the loal SGVLUG/SGVHAK, San Gabriel Valley Linux User group, the possibility of increasing the depth of the SD Card slot to accommodate half length micro-SD card adapter was mentioned.

After a quick modification in LibreCAD, a few extra lines of G-code was inserted and TuxCASE for Raspberry Pi project is now complete.

Installation notes for connecting Arduino to Raspberry Pi via rosserial.

Two available tutorials were used for reference. The first tutorial goes over installation of Fuete ROS on a Debian, and the second tutorial is specifically for RPi installation.

The above tutorial were followed to just before building Layer 2 (Higher-level robotics libraries and tools) due to rosdep install -a errors. Subsequently, rosserial package containing rosserial_arduino was manually built and installed

There were a few deviations from the above tutorials and they are as follow:

• Used sudo pip install -U rosdep==0.10.08 to avoid later rosdep installation errors
• sudo aptitude install libeigen3-dev, libcppunit-dev, python-sip-dev, python-serial for additional dependencies required for rosserial installation.
• Created a workspace to manually download and build rosserial and related packages.
  • rosws init ~/fuerte_workspace
  • source ~/fuerte_workspace/setup.bash
• download and build the the following ROS packages,
  • bullet, kdl, tf, rosserial
• The steps used to download and build each package.
  • roslocate info package_name > package_name.rosinstall
  • rosinstall ~/fuerte_workspace package_name.rosinstall
  • source ~/fuerte_worksapce/setup.bash
  • rosmake package_name
• For tf package, use the fuerte_devel version by editing tf.rosinstall

To bypass SSL certificate error during rosinstall, edit the package_name.rosinstall and change uri from https to http.

Arduino was running a publisher program uploaded from a PC with ROS and Arduino IDE installed following another ROS tutorial. Command line usage of ROS/Arduino upload is possible.

The last step of the product development process is creating the promotional photos for retail sales. Photos are taken with a dslr camera in its native raw format and post processed in URaw before exporting to GIMP for the final re-sizing and adding graphics elements.

After the first set of photos were taken, there was a compatibility issue between UFRaw and Canon T2i so second set of photos were taken with a Canon 5DMk2.

The 2" x 4" product label was also designed with Inkscape. The embedded QR code was first generated with command line qrencode then imported into Inkscape. Originally, the QR code image was generated in PNG format then automatically traced with Inkscape's Trace Bitmap command. However, qrencode can also generated QR code in EPS format without the need for trace conversion.