3D Printing

How To: TFT LCD with TouchUI on Raspberry Pi OctoPi Rig

I recently ventured into adding a " TFT to my LulzBot ; I already have OctoPrint running, but there are times (usually during filament failure events) I need to directly control the printer (heat the filament, move axis motors etc).  After 3 painful days of messing around with different tutorials, I finally figured it out and it works dammit!  I haven't found a single source that has all steps in one place, so I decided to…
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3D Printing

USB Dial

This is another one of those "did it because I can" projects.  It's a USB dial that uses a Teensy Arduino unit at it's core and allows me to emulate my mouse.  I use TinkerCAD avidly to design my 3D printed models.   I wanted to have both this and my mouse at the same time.  The mouse would be used for some activities ( object selection/rotation/editing) while the dial would fill in to perform rotate/zoom in/out…
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3D Printing

3D Printed RC Hex to LEGO Hub Adapter

After building BluCrawler, I wanted to see what other possibilities there were with builds using RC crawler tires.  LEGO is not there yet with similar tires (closest are the Claas Xerion tires - but they are not crawler tires).  Anyway, it's challenging to mate a LEGO hub to an RC tire.  There are aftermarket adapters out there, but they are expensive, so I decided to design and print my own. You can download the STL file here.  Samples…
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3D Printing

WIoT-2 Weather and Home Automation – Nextion with ESP8266/ESP32

This is a continuation from my first iteration of WIoT weather station.  What is WIoT-2?  I use it as a cloud-connected (IoT) info center of sorts.  It is a culmination of information my wife or I often look for either on our way out of the house, or when we come home.  It displays current/forecast weather, temp/humidity from outside the house (this), date, time, our local waste collection schedule, currency rates, the status of our garage…
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3D Printing

LulzBot Mini: Arduino Temp Monitor / Fan & LED Controller

I'm on a mission to reduce the amount of noise my LulzBot Mini 3D printer makes. I've already added a motor damper to the Y axis.  However, one thing that is consistently noisy is the case fan.   It's on at > 70% nearly all the time.  In addition to this, the air vent fins in the side of the case amplifies the fan noise.  So, I decided to build my own fan controller.  …
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