agrasyuk

Ian, AFAIK there is no direct support of DCS by SOIC. There was however a script that bridges between the two to some extend. I never considered SOIC (and you listed some of my reasons as well) so I haven't look into this matter in detail. Jason, aside of being less expensive Ian's solution is much more flexible and futurepoof if you ask me. So effort invested in learning that approach is IMHO well spent.

Hi Sage. Yes, sometimes there can be quite an information overload. Welcome to the club. :) As far as mapping you can configure your bodnar card directly in sim (aside of the rotary). But I would suggest looking at Helios software - see the sticky here. Even if you dont intend to have another monitor for instrumentation Helios allows easy binding of to regular and multi position switches. For output Helios can work with phidgets led card. But for more economical solution look at DCS-BIOS (also a sticky thread) as it will allow use of very inexpensive arduino boards.

To add: Please don't take the above as discouragement. I would advise acquiring Uno or any other arduino board (if you don't have already) and one of those LCD modules. These are very inexpensive and If anything it will be a nice exersize for you installing libraries and practicing some coding. Plenty of examples out there. PS, you often see those displaying good quality photo. This accomplished by loading the gif file from attached SD card. and still takes seconds - almost useless for our purposes. This is quite obvious. Reason I mentioned the larger module is to demonstrate the strange disparity in price

This is quite interesting indeed. What software is used for this purpose and what is it's cost?

Servo makes adequate flap gauge . this has to do with the fact flap will hold either of 3 preset positions . fuel quantity gauge can also get by with servo perhaps. However all other instruments could use much smoother motion then the hobby servo can provide. Try it, but be prepared to go with different solution

You will need to look closer at what those 3.5" arduino LCD actually are. With either SPI or 8bit interface you get very low draw speeds (think several seconds to redraw entire screen) and with available lcd libraries your arduino code can only draw geometrical shapes and text of set font. Im not sure what "theory" you had in mind, but those screen can not output live image from PC.

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=2323271&postcount=998

650 pounds is roughly 1000$ so it sounds about right. Now, talking about QC issues I just caught a major one - I guess I had a tiny crack in the back of the tube... Heard strange hissing sound as I turn off the water pump, open the back cover and see the backside slowly dripping. Thinking it might be poorly seated hose I try to put it on better and SNAP - now I'm holding the entire back piece in my hand. No lasing for me tonight. Perhaps it is for the better that it happened now and not month in. That tube is warranty covered so Monday it looks like I'm driving to Hoffman estates again. , hopefully they will not give me hard time replacing and maybe will agree to give me a credit towards longer tube as repoacement (machine comes with 720mm one, same as K40, but it seems 850mm will fit right in). Judjing by spect PSU should handle additional 5W of output. Worst comes to worst I'll try to repair, as the actual vessel is not broken. Silicone the piece in, put a plastic shroud around the area and then fill it with more Sil. On the plus side - compared to K40 I really like the mechanics. So smooth and so much quieter. Loaded couple of my drawings and preformed the run without turning the beam. Sweet.

as far as video signal, judging by the visible VGA cable i would guess its a viewport. i am however interested to find out what lcd+controller combo was used here. 3.5" LCDs are abundant on ebay, but for some reason the moment anything better then composite out is required, like VGA, the price immediately jumps north of 100$ ... very reasnoable 5 inch one , with HDMI even, i don't get why such difference

hey there triise, cute looking cnc there :) looking forward to see how will this engrave letters. id think you will want to get some sort of spoil board for it though.

good luck on the project weeb, you sure will have fun tinkering with that. that X7 controller looks very interesting. in reality that color LCD is completely not needed as you usually will be looking at actual work, but i still would get that if i needed a new DSP - i like pretty screens and hi-techish stuff:). no time to build one after all, another small job came up. here is what i brought home with me earlier today - Gweike Storm500: that's the last one they had on hand - display unit. i'm not to worried about time on the tube as it wasn't connected. the items that need to be included with it were in quite disarray however. big stuff like pipes and pumps i did get. but the smaller ones, like packet of documents, CDs, clamps etc required sometime to be found. and still i think some stuff is misplaced, will need to find an adapter for the water pump, got a 72mm focus gauge whilst i was under impression that the lens is 55mm. and the machine itself is not without QC issues - shaped acrylic window sheet was put on backwards :doh: all an all i'm extremely happy however. will be connecting the exhaust, my own air supply and water tomorow to test the operation. then i need a lower table for it. a handle and perhaps some gas struts for the heavy lid will be nice addition too evntually so roomy!

agreed on the usability, i also don't regret going with DSP for me. but i wasn't sure of OP's budget and weeb needs to at least know about his options before droping another 500+ my laser finally sold today and now i'm torn between the FSL gen5, the generic blue/white 5030 machine and building my own... would get FSL, but sawmillcreek has some bad stories. Add: Storm500 looks like a very likely candidate .

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=137157 :)

Hi Neal, Take a look at this: http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=96014

Before you move on that kit do a research on RAMPS and arduino solution. there are arduino and like based solutions for DIY 3d printers, so there has to be similar for lasers.

To follow up on my own question about FSlasers I visited their site and spent half an hour or so with support person Lane. I still have couple of concerns , but now I strongly consider their 5 tth gen hobby device. Peter, which laser tube did you get with yours, 40 or 45W ? Did you get your machine new? While I was on the phone with FSL we discussed fume extraction as well. Iast week I had an opportunity to perform another custom laser job (small, annoying, not sim related, but laser paid itself off yet another time). Working in garage in feezing temps was quite a thing by itself, and then to add there was quite a situation with fumes. Stink as if the air wasn't drawn through 6" layer of activated carbon. I suspect moisture covered and froze on the AC killing the adsorbsion. I exhaust outside but still got some fumes back. FSL person promised to do a research on cold weather operating with their air filtering supplier as well.

consider not buying as package. the stop button, additional PSU and complete new laser head is not really needed. but i guess it is not that much extra $ ..

hi Peter. i am in the market for a new device actually - was looking at one of those things I could pull off a FS as far as budget , but i'm trying to figure out what am i getting for the extra money with it. i did read about quite some gripes with FS support as well. i don't see anything wrong with that and with this machine learn a lot you will :) I have the same unit for now - after tuning it definitely can make nice looking pit parts. but even before you make your first cut I urge you to think about fume extraction, you need something along the lines of a powerful shop dust collector fan of at least 660cfm. controller and air assist is a must. my setup with DIY activated carbon filter http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=85478&page=8 when you consider what is included it is actually quite remarkable they managed to piece that together and still make profit. i see those for as low as 420$ shipped (and it is a heavy box).

That happens quite often with these. My sample also had quite a few quality issues. And as far as support hope for better, but chances are very good that your case will be exactly as all others - 0 support . once they got your money chinese guys suddenly are way less communicative. EDITED: But I don't see anything disastrous that you can't fix yourself here - realistically you will need to take care of the issues on your own. As i see it table needs to be removed for straightening. while the table is off consider shortening the exhaust port to gain bit more vertical work area. One of the Y axis belts probably jumped a tooth. Adjusting the plate in pic 3 will not solve anything angle between axii need to be exactly 90 degrees or you will get parallelogram parts . Chances are very good that you will need to align the optics in your machine as well. The good part that you will get to know your device really well and any further service will be a breathe :) Also think about upgrades. I don't see a honeycomb table so I assume it is bare macine with the standard moshi board equipped. I discovered pretty quick that DSP upgrade is unavoidable. Air assist is also mandatory. And finally the most important part - what are you doing as far as fume extraction? Those machines stink hazardous fumes when cutting acrylic. Fan that is included is a joke.

That is something I'm very happy to read.

thanks Ian, now i know what is the "x" in xev stands for :). i also found its command line counterpart - "showkey" command. all those media keys are perfectly visible to RPi. not sure if doing raspbi-config and switching from generic104 keyboard dell multimedia had any part in it, i did it before trying xev. looked at xmodmap, found but again, the "X" in it's name probably means it applies to GUI, while i'm trying to make a pure command line script. at the moment i'm looking at using loadkeys solution. and while i'm at it i imported GPIO lib into the script. i think i will have AAP connected to the PI as well. will be testing if those additional event callbacks affect performance

Hi Tronix, welcome aboard. I cannot help you with SIOC as i never went deeper then reading a bit about OC project. hopefully you are open to other interfacing options, several are being discussed in neighboring threads of this board.

why wasted? i wouldn't say that. with several USBs on board (additional joystic and HID controlers) that device makes really nice hub for DSC-BIOS. and then there is on board GPIO :) and to add to that list i just came across ODROID. http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G140610189490 http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G141578608433 so many cool computer/electronic stuff, so little time :)

thank you for the suggestion John. i actually do have all the equipment for airbrushing (my other hobby is scale modeling). but its all still packed from the move. but more importantly i do need to build a spray-booth to use all those nice fuming solvent based paint stuff inside. i actually have a plan for a vent/hood/booth for my workplace , will be venting out the window (and will be helpful with soldering fumes too). eventually i will build that too, for now its quick can spraying in freezing garage :) ADD: after some trial and error I got the script to respond to keyboard commands and found the proper way to send the CDU input to DCSBIOS server. so now i can key in cdu scratchpad data from the keyboard attached to the PI! response time, from the moment key pressed, string sent to DCS-BIOS, updated CDU screen text recieved and displayed is as if typed locally - perfectly appropriate. :) what will be a challenge still is the fact that even pygame doesn't recognize all the keys. wrote a quick script to display pygame constant names of keys it sees as being pressed. Media keys not being seen i guess could have been expected, but both WIN keys recognized as L-ALT and Capslock as "Unknown" is really surprising. which means i can't connect my buttons to kbd controller arbitrarily and remap later... and before i know its that time of day again, 2AM...

just a usual canned spray-paint. coat of white and then several coats of black.