11–20 of 24 posts
I'm blown away by the awesome inline KiCad visualizations. Did you use any tooling for capturing the layout view so the layers could be overlapped so easily?
Any thoughts on making a library for this so others can build sites as beautiful as yours? It'd be a great tool for sure. As noted elsewhere in the comments, your documentation is top notch.
Thanks!
@theacodes- I'm blown away by the awesome inline KiCad visualizations. Did you use any tooling for capturing the layout view so the layers could be overlapped so easily? Any thoughts on making a library for this so others can build sites as beautiful as yours? It'd be a great tool for sure. As noted elsewhere in the comments, your documentation is top notch. Thanks!
@theacodes- I'm blown away by the awesome inline KiCad visualizations. Did you use any tooling for capturing the layout view so the layers could be overlapped so easily? Any thoughts on making a library for this so others can build sites as beautiful as yours? It'd be a great tool for sure. As noted elsewhere in the comments, your documentation is top notch. Thanks!
Thank you! For the board layers I just used macOS's screenshot utility, though I would like to do something fancier in the future. The schematics are rendered using code I wrote specifically for this article, but I am planning to publish it as an open source library so others can use it. It needs a little bit more polishing before it's ready, though! You can follow me on Twitter if you wanna get updates about it.
This website has a cool implementation of a KiCad web viewer:
I am absolutely loving the author's explanation on WHY each component was selected, placed, and caveats. The interactive schematics and gerbers are subtle but very effective. Overall a very clear design and tone I really need to follow for my own PCB projects.
I got to the part about 3.3V being derived from 5V and thought to myself "why not get it from 24V?" and then just a tiny bit later, there's the bit about USB and how Starfish can just take 5V from the USB host, and it clicked.
I also learned about Sparkfun's QWIIC connector in the aside about the chosen i2c bus switch having two "extra" channels. Love it, thanks for the article, Thea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! For the board layers I just used macOS's screenshot utility, though I would like to do something fancier in the future. The schematics are rendered using code I wrote specifically for this article, but I am planning to publish it as an open source library so others can use it. It needs a little bit more polishing before it's ready, though! You can follow me on Twitter if you wanna get updates about it.
I wish there was an easy way to embed a KiCad layout to a webpage in a zoomable format for design reviews. One way is to export an SVG file and show it on the web, but in my experience this starts to choke on large boards. This website has a cool implementation of a KiCad web viewer: https://climbers.net/sbc/kicad-web-viewer/
I am absolutely loving the author's explanation on WHY each component was selected, placed, and caveats. The interactive schematics and gerbers are subtle but very effective. Overall a very clear design and tone I really need to follow for my own PCB projects.
Usually when I read through a build-out description like this, the author writes it for an audience that has a lot more background knowledge than I do. This article, on the other hand, was lucid and the explication helped me follow along. I got to the part about 3.3V being derived from 5V and thought to myself "why not get it from 24V?" and then just a tiny bit later, there's the bit about USB and how Starfish can ju…
> why not get it from 24V?
There are DC-DC converters in that same family that can do 4.75~36V -> 3.3V, but since I needed the 5V anyway for the LEDs and I/Os, tossing an inexpensive and small LDO for 5V -> 3.3V is an easy call.
It's not a "pick and place" until you've got the cameras and alignment working.
As much as I love seeing this kind of hardware stuff, the problem with "pick and place" is the vision integration, not the motor control. That's where everybody gets stuck. It's not a "pick and place" until you've got the cameras and alignment working.
If you're interested in how the LumenPnP handles vision, you can check out the OpenPNP project which handles all of the computer vision involved.
As much as I love seeing this kind of hardware stuff, the problem with "pick and place" is the vision integration, not the motor control. That's where everybody gets stuck. It's not a "pick and place" until you've got the cameras and alignment working.
You're not wrong, but it's also not the focus of the article. There's a lot of complexity in a pick and place system, for example I didn't even touch on the entirely separate board that's controlling the tool head. If I tried to capture all that at once, I'd be writing an entire textbook, not an article. If you're interested in how the LumenPnP handles vision, you can check out the OpenPNP project which handles all o…
I truly hope your machine gets past that point, because it would be really good to have a genuine, open-source pick and place machine. With the current advances in ML/AI and running on graphics cards, it should be within the realm of a hobbyist nowadays.
I wish you good luck and hope to see your stuff on one of the crowdfunding sites one day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're not wrong, but it's also not the focus of the article. There's a lot of complexity in a pick and place system, for example I didn't even touch on the entirely separate board that's controlling the tool head. If I tried to capture all that at once, I'd be writing an entire textbook, not an article. If you're interested in how the LumenPnP handles vision, you can check out the OpenPNP project which handles all o…
Those are the same non-functional machines I have seen for the past decade in some cases. All of them got to vision and got stuck. I truly hope your machine gets past that point, because it would be really good to have a genuine, open-source pick and place machine. With the current advances in ML/AI and running on graphics cards, it should be within the realm of a hobbyist nowadays. I wish you good luck and hope to s…