Installation (compilation) of FreeCAD 015 on OpenSUSE 13.2

This is an update of my article about installing version 014 on OpenSUSE 13.2 – Now it’s 015’s turn to be compiled on OpenSuse 13.2 – There are some minor changes compared to previous versions.

As said in last post, FreeCAD is a very good Open Source 3D CAD program, I use it sometimes to make 3D objects I print, and sometimes post on Thingiverse, and as far as I could see, the package ready for OpenSUSE has some issues, so I decided to compile myself, based on information I found here and there (i.e. http://www.freecadweb.org /wiki/index.php?title=CompileOnUnix) and by trying out, looking at results and error messages. It may not be complete or perfect, but that worked for me on a fresh OpenSUSE 13.2 install

 

So let’s go again, to the command line, this is what I did :

Let’s add sources for dependencies (that is quick) :

‘Trust’ sources when asked for

cd
sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/devel:/languages:/python/openSUSE_13.2/ PythonDev
sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_13.2/ Games
sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_13.2/ KDE:Extra

Refresh repositories  (that takes a bit longer)

sudo zypper refresh

And launch installation of dependencies (that is longer)

Accept installation of packages when asked to

sudo zypper install gcc cmake OpenCASCADE-devel libXerces-c-devel python-devel libqt4-devel python-qt4 Coin-devel SoQt-devel boost-devel libode-devel libQtWebKit-devel libeigen3-devel gcc-fortran freetype 2 freetype2-devel libshiboken-devel python-pyside-devel libspnav-devel swig python-pyside-tools doxygen python-matplotlib

Hopefully it also works fine for you, and now let’s fetch the source code file (archive ) here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/free-cad/FreeCAD%20Source/freecad_0.15.4671.tar.gz

Extract its content and enter its directory:

tar -zxvf freeCAD..... (name of file)
cd freeCAD..... (name of directory where it has been extracted to)

And launch compilation (This took some time even on a good NB, but you can follow the progress in %)

cmake .
make

And now you can launch FreeCAD (if all went fine)

 

./bin/FreeCAD
snapshot1


 

And check out the Website http://www.freecadweb.org/

 


					

Vacuumio I (the Thymio II vacuum cleaner) – Work in Progress

The Project (status 22 February 2015)

also Published on Aseba

The idea of this project is to build a vacuum cleaner ‘module’ for Thymio II.

The challenge is to find or build the proper parts so as it is as simple as possible, and in the idea to challenge everyone interested, to submit and test code that would allow Thymio II to cover a room as fast as possible, making only usage of the integrated sensors and features of Thymio II.

NB : The challenge goes beyond the scope of the initial thoughts that are described, the parts made hereafter need to be changed, the suction system is too poor at this stage, and needs a  replacement (probably based on cyclone separator) as it sucks only very tiny dust, the current system induces turbulence in the dust container (fluid dynamics) and thus not ready for prime time.
I’m working on it and testing but any proposal is welcome 🙂

So for this, let’s start with the ‘making’

The ‘making’

Thymio II has of course the possibility to be extended with Lego parts. As there are some constraints I decided to also use 3D printed parts, as well as, of course, some other parts for aspiration

3D printed parts

I designed the 3D printed parts with FreeCAD 014. I used FreeCAD because it is off-line (not a Cloud solution which would need permanent Internet connection), and because I used it before, thus know it a bit, and also because it is multi platform (Windows, OSX, Linux).

The parts where made with the ‘Parts’ module of FreeCAD, only using primitives with fusions and cuts. It’s quick and dirty, and an expert would probably do much better.

I designed 3 parts :

  1. The hose (front aspiration part)
  2. The dust container
  3. The top cover for the dust container, which holds an aspiration system and the batteries. This will depend on the suction system adopted

fv1dust_container1TopCoverTop_cover

I printed these parts with my Solidoodle 2 3D printer. It’s not the best today but works fine for the purpose. You might have to use a 5mm diameter drill to ‘rework’ the Lego holes, depending on how precise the 3D printer is

Lego

For the Lego part I tried to make it simple and easy to remove.

Once assembled with the other parts, the whole vacuum cleaner module can be easily removed from Thymio II as one piece.

I used LDD (Lego Digital Designer) to generate the assembly instructions and list of needed Lego bricks. You can of course use other bricks to have the same result if you don’t have the bricks listed.

armature_LDD

Assembly instruction

Flexible pipe

I used a flexible pipe to ‘connect’ the front aspiration part to the dust container as seen on picture.

This can usually be found in pet shops where you can buy aquariums, I used 4 pipes, 13 cm long and with a diameter of 10 mm

Suction  system (motor)

This is probably the most challenging part. The Suction system is mounted on the top cover of the dust container. It is made by a ventilator/motor/turbin and a battery pack. I tested several ones, but at this time the performance is still poor. Depending on the aspiration surface, type of engine and rotor, as well as the motor power, the results vary a lot, there are unwanted side effects. Furthermore, as adding a filter will even more reduce the suction, I may have to develop a ‘cyclone’ system.

2motorholders

The Code

The code is another big thing. The current tests base on the Thymio II ‘Explorer’ mode (yellow). I will probably base the code on it and adapt it. It will be an interesting challenge to write optimal code so as Vacuumio covers as much as possible of a room as fast as possible.

Future Improvements

  1. Augmenting suction capacity (cyclone separator ?)
  2. Adapted code

Files :

3D Parts
Lego Instructions

First prototype

separate_elementsVacuumio

 

And here is a first video  :

Thanks for your interest, Alain Tuor

Packard Bell oneTwo AiO M3870 disassembly

This is a quick visual guide on how to open this all in on computer. I spent some time fiddling aroud to find the scres and clips. I hope this will help those who want to give a new life to this computer by adding (changin) RAP or replacing the slow 5400 RPM Hard Drive by a faster SSD on SSHD

So here is what the model looks like

Front
Front

Back (sorry for the fuzzy image)

There are 9 screws to remove to open it, 2 are visible, the next 3 under the cache situated under the stand
Back

One the cache removed you can access the 3 next screws and remove the stand
media-20141224

You now need to remove the cache on the DVD drive by simply but gently pulling it, you can then access the next 2 screws
media-20141226

Al last, remove the rubber parts at the bottom of the screen, and you can access the last 2 screws to open it
media-20141225

Here is a visual so as you can see where the clips are, this was not simple to find but you must unclip it with, ie a screw driver or so

media-20141222 media-20141223

Inside of it you can access the hard drive directly by removing 1 screw, or the memory by removing several more screws (not all shown by arrow) and take off the main plate
media-20141221media-20141220

This is not very precise but I hope it can help; as I didn’t find any instruction or manual on the web I wanted to share at least some info.

Installation (compilation) of FreeCAD 014 on OpenSUSE 13.2

This is an update… sort of, of the article from February which was about installing version 013 on OpenSUSE 13.1 (that was in French, decided to post this one in English)

As said in last post, FreeCAD is a very good Open Source 3D CAD program, I use it sometimes to make 3D objects I print, and sometimes post on Thingiverse, and as far as I could see, the package ready for OpenSUSE has some issues, so I decided to compile myself, based on information I found here and there (i.e. http://www.freecadweb.org /wiki/index.php?title=CompileOnUnix) and by trying out, looking at results and error messages. It may not be complete or perfect, but that worked for me on a fresh OpenSUSE 13.2 install

 

So let’s go, to the command line, this is what I did :

Let’s add sources for dependencies (that is quick) :

‘Trust’ sources when asked for

cd

sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_13.2/ Games
sudo zypper addrepo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Extra/openSUSE_13.2/ KDE:Extra

Refresh repositories  (that takes a bit longer)

sudo zypper refresh

And launch installation of dependencies (that is longer)

Accept installation of packages when asked to

sudo zypper install eigen3 swig gcc cmake OpenCASCADE-devel libXerces-c-devel python-devel libqt4-devel python-qt4 Coin-devel SoQt-devel boost-devel  libode-devel libQtWebKit-devel libeigen3-devel gcc-fortran python-matplotlib libspnav-devel shiboken-devel python-pyside-devel doxygen

Hopefully it also works fine for you, and now let’s fetch the source code file (archive ) here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/free-cad/files/FreeCAD%20Source/freecad-0.14.3702.tar.gz/download

Extract its content and enter its directory:

tar -zxvf freeCAD..... (name of file)
cd freeCAD..... (name of directory where it has been extracted to)

And launch compilation (This took some time even on a good NB, but you can follow the progress in %)

cmake .
make

And now you can launch FreeCAD (if all went fine)

 

./bin/FreeCAD
snapshot1


I must say though that there may be missing things, i.e. I got a message saying :

matplotlib not found, so Plot module can not be loaded
plot module is disabled, tools cannot graph output curves

But it is not mandatory for most things.

And check out the Website http://www.freecadweb.org/

 


					

L’impression 3D – Bientôt notre quotidien ?

On en parle depuis des années, à petite échelle, et beaucoup d’encre à coulé récemment sur le sujet. 2012 a été une année faste, les annonces se sont succédées et les premières imprimantes 3D à moins de CHF 500.- ont vu le jour. Je me suis lancé, vu les prix intéressants après une longue attente. J’ai tout de même dû attendre 3 mois pour obtenir enfin ce ‘jouet’ pour geek. L’excitation était à son comble lorsque j’ai enfin reçu ma ‘Solidoodle’. (www.solidoodle.com), une petite imprimante qui peut imprimer des objets de 14cm3, c’est déjà pas mal. L’imprimante en question est un modèle à extrusion, un filament de plastique (ABS, PLA) est poussé au travert d’une buse préalablement chauffée, le filament qui en sort est déposé par couches successives pour en former un objet fini.

 

sd

 

Mais à quoi ça sert ?

Tout d’abord, comme toute nouveauté, on joue avec, on télécharge des objets, par exemple sur www.thingiverse.com, il y en a à profusion. Une fois cette phase passée on se dit, et après ? On commence à réfléchir à ce qu’on pourrait faire d’utile (encore faut-il définir ce qui est utile). Bon ça tombe bien, ça fait 2 ans déjà que je voulais faire un petit ‘bras’ pour déclencher des photos pour une tête motorisée Gigapan Epic 100 (http://www.gigapan.com/) , celui qui était livré avec était trop court pour mon appareil photo, un Olympus Pen, arghh… bref joli petit projet pour commencer.

 

Alors voilà, j’ai pris toutes les mesures du bras existant, défini la longueur nécessaire et… trouvé un programme pour le dessiner en 3D ; là la difficulté a commencé, apprendre à utiliser un programme de CAO 3D paramétrique, FreeCAD dans mon cas, c’est Open Source (http://free-cad.sourceforge.net/). C’était fastidieux, ça m’a pris quelques heures, on dessine des primitives, définit les dimensions, fait des extrusions, ‘perce’, etc. et puis finalement une fois qu’on maîtrise un peu, un tel objet est fait en 10min. D’autres programmes, bien plus ‘basics’ et simples à utiliser existent (quelques exemples plus bas).

FreeCAD en action
fc

Pour que l’imprimante puisse faire son travail, on exporte en format .stl, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_%28file_format%29), on fait générer du GCode (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gcode), celui-ci servant à indiquer à l’imprimante que faire, comme déplacer la tête, extruder du plastique etc., on le charge dans le programme de l’imprimante, et on appuie sur ‘print’. Le modèle 3D, téléchargeable est disponible sous http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:40199, histoire de se donner une idée.

 

Le ‘bras’ imprimé en question, monté sur le Gigapan

gp

 

Et demain ?

Bon, c’était une introduction très sommaires sans entrer dans trop de détails

En 2013-2014 beaucoup de développements vont encore se faire et les imprimantes ‘grand publique’ vont se généraliser, plus ‘finies’, plus faciles à mettre en oeuvre et à manipuler ; le plus important pour que le marché les accepte, c’est le ‘Business Model’, et là, il y a une ébullition en ce moment, certains business models existent, et l’industrie cherche activement les moyens de fabriquer et commercialiser ces imprimantes, les consommables, et bien sûr aussi les modèles 3D, que l’on peut/pourrait vendre sur internet, un peu comme les ‘Markets’ ou ‘Stores’ à la Google ou Apple p.ex., les annonces fracassantes vont arriver, le tout c’est de savoir quand, je vous laisse réfléchir… On peut imaginer une imprimante connectée sur Internet, contrôlée par une App sur Smartphone ou Tablet, on télécharge l’objet, lance l’impression, et, de retour à la maison, l’objet est imprimé, angle de fixation, crochet mural, statuette… la seule limite, c’est la créativité et l’imagination… et aussi le type d’imprimante, sa taille, qualité et résolution.

 

Voici quelques sites de plus à explorer, qui ne vont pas manquer de vous aider à cette réflexion si ce n’est déjà fait :

 

Makerbot, un des pionniers des imprimantes 3D ‘pas chères’ – http://www.makerbot.com/

123d Apps de Autodesk – divers outils pour concevoir des objets 3D http://www.123dapp.com/

Sculpteo – Commander des objets 3D en Ligne http://www.sculpteo.com/

Thingiverse – des milliers d’objets 3D à télécharger http://www.thingiverse.com/

Cubify de 3DSystems – Imprimantes 3D style grand publique et plus… www.cubify.com

Formlabs – imprimante 3D ‘HiRes’ prometteuse http://formlabs.com/

3DTin http://www.3dtin.com/ et TinkerCAD https://tinkercad.com/ , création d’objets ‘online’

et bien d’autre existent, ça grouille, et ça va continuer, affaire à suivre…