Tag Archives: Time-lapse

Update to version 2.0.5 beta

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Here it is – the next release – packed with new features and functionalities. The biggest is surely the all new Windows client (with its final name) miniEngine Studio!

miniE Studio splash

The new miniEngine Studio can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/airiclenz/miniEngineStudio

The miniEngine software is also on GitHub: https://github.com/airiclenz/miniEngine2

Here is a list of all major updates and changes to the system:

  • Added the minEngine Studio
  • Added minEngine functions for the the minEngine Studio software
  • Added new “Keyframes Mode” which is dedicated to (currently) only work together with the miniEngine Studio
  • Added a function that updates settings to the new version during a software update (no configuration gets lost any longer)
  • Improved dashboards to show only relevant data
  • Improved settings menu-header
  • Optimized system modes and run styles for easier use
  • Fixed a bug where the motor was not moving when motor sleep was enabled
  • Fixed a bug that not saved the keep powered status.

Software

The new Windows client has no documentation yet but should be pretty self explanatory as all button have a tooltip to guide you as much as possible. I also tried to make the user interface as clean and straight-forward as possible. If anyone of you still is not able to figure out how it works, please contact me via the forum. I will help you as good as I can to make it work together with your miniEngine!

If you have any suggestions or find bugs, please let me know. This is the very first release and there is surely lots of space for improvements!

…but mainly I just hope it is of any use for you guys!

miniE Stusio mainForm

Here are some limitations to the functionality which I am aware of:

  • The defined curves can not yet be stored on the miniEngine. After a reboot everything is gone and needs to be sent to the miniEngine again (this will surely some later).
  • The communication between the Studio and and miniEngine might not work 100% in any case. If something is not working, try pressing the button again.
  • The system is not yet “water-proof” and might have some unexpected behavior. I highly recommend using it with care, common sense and limit switches to not destroy your hardware.
  • It does not work together with the miniEngine v1.

Documentation

I also added a big portion to the documentation which should explains the system-assembly in much more detail.

documentation
Link to the documentation….

Have fun with the new stuff!

Cheers,

Airic

path Designer

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Hello everyone,

I want to let you know what the current status fo the project is and on what I am working on. So let’s get started…

path Designer

The major development that is ongoing right now is a Windows based client software for editing and testing Bézier-based curves – in other words: you’ll have full control over all axes and thus will be able to define when your motors should be where. The software will connect to your miniEngine via the USB port. The curve / graph editor is basically done and it is already possible to create, save and load setups. Even the basic communication with the Arduino is working.

Here is a screenshot of the client in its current development state:

gD_general

In the screenshot above you can see a setup with 2 axes (the second axis is the gray one in the background). The currently selected axis is using just 2 curve-segments (see below for an explanation what a curve-segment is). You can fill up your miniEngine with setups up to 25 curve-segments in total. This means that all your axes can together use 25 curve-segments. And here is a little graphic that shows what a curve-segment actually is (for the ones that want to know it in more detail – one curve-segment is one quadric Bézier curve):

gD_curve-segments

Here is another screenshot showing that a curve does not need to be curved. The 2 last curve-segments are simply flattened to a linear segments (there is a button for doing that)

gD_edit_point

The client supports selecting multiple points and moving them all together as well as numeric point placement for very precise setups where every mm / ms counts.

The connection to the miniEngine will be initialized by simply choosing its COM-port:

gD_COM

The next steps will be to finalize the communication part of the software so that the the paths can be send to the miniEngine and the program can be started.

The software will be released as open Source under the GPL license. It is being developed in .NET Visual Basic. Please contact me if you want to port it to Mac or Linux (I simply don’t have the time to take care of the miniEngine as well as 3 different  computer-clients thanks to the need to sleep regularly)

Documentation

The other place where things are happening is the documentation. I received some valuable feedback regarding the assembly of the BED-board. The next release will also contain some additional details about how to assemble the BED-board. There will also be explanations about different variants for connecting the Big EasyDrivers to the BED board and for connecting the BED board to the main Board of the miniEngine.

I am looking forward to the next release and hope you too!

Have fun!
Airic

Update to version 2.0.4 beta

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Hello everyone,

the new version is out and we are now in the Beta state. Here are the changes:

  • Added the external trigger input system for starting, stopping and shooting the camera. This will be extended in the future with additional triggers.
  • Added a Dashboard that is displayed when the miniEngine is running. This will make it clearer to recognize if the system is running or not.
  • Added a messaging system. This allows messages to the user so that the system can tell what it is actually doing.
  • Added a new system font. Now there are 3 choices for the ones that want to tweak their user interface for optimal readability.

The biggest and most versatile new feature is the trigger system. This allows the execution of core commands with external signals. Right now there are 3 functions implemented:

  • Start the engine
  • Stop the engine
  • Trigger the camera

This means that you can now start multiple miniEngines simultaneously with one signal. You can also start / stop the miniEngine or trigger the camera on certain events  which could come from anywhere (‘want to play with a light sensor?). This is the current menu for the trigger setup:

Trigger menu

The easies way to implement this new feature is this:

Bildschirmfoto 2014-02-19 um 21.17.37

Please keep in mind that the trigger inputs are directly connected to the Arduino processor! This means you need to keep your signals between 0V and 3.3V – otherwise you might destroy your Arduino! If you use the above circuit and the trigger type “Falling”, it works without any external voltages and just a simple switch. In this case you can ignore the red text above.

Triggers are only active if the miniEngine was started by pressing the “Start” key. when you defined a “Start” trigger, the system will wait until it actually starts until the trigger signal arrived.

The next big new thing is the Dashboard. This is what you now see when the engine is running:
Dashboard

Here is the new font…New font

…and here the new message system in action:
Skype-0227.900px

I hope you like the new features and also that they allow more versatile setups and thus to boost your creativity.

Have fun and post some of your thoughts in the forum!
Airic

Motor calibration

Quote

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Here is a little manual describing how to find the correct motor calibration value for your setup – the mathematical and most precise way. This can now also be found in the documentation:

The miniEngine 2 offers the possibility to calibrate the motors you are using. This calibration takes the motor and its specifications itself as well as the rig it is driving into account. This chapter is aiming at helping you finding the correct calibration value for your motor(s). The calibration values needed, should be given with the following units:

• steps per centimeter for linear movements
• steps per degree for radial movements

As stepper motors come in a variety of form factors and specifications we need to add the most important of these specs to our calibrations. This is the degrees been moved by one full motor step. The most common one is 1.8°. This means that such a motor needs 200 full steps to do one full revelation:

\frac{360^{\circ}}{1.8^{\circ}} = 200

Because we are using multi-stepping to achieve a finer resolution, we need to multiply this full-step-value with the amount of sub-steps done. In this example we are using 1/16th stepping (which is the default for the recommended Big Easydriver):

200{\times}16 = 3200

..or if you prefer the full version

\frac{200}{(\frac{1}{16})} = 3200

Ok – so we need 3200 steps to do a full revelation with the stepper motor in micro- stepping-mode. Now let‘s add the rig that this motor is driving to the calculation. For now we are assuming we are driving a toothed belt with the stepper. The gearwheel has a circumference of 3.5cm. This means that 1 stepper revelation moves the belt 3.5cm. Here is how we get how much steps are needed for 1cm – which is also our final calibration value:

\frac{1cm}{3.5cm}\times{3200}=914.29

Now we can enter 914.29 steps / cm as the calibration value into the system.

If we had a motor that would do a radial move, the calibration-calculation would just differ in the last step. Assuming you are not using the motor to rotate your axis 1:1 but with a reduction of 1:4 (four revelations of the motor rotate the axis one time) , the final calculation-step would look like this:

4\times\frac{3200}{360}=35.56

The final calibration value for the radial setup is 35.56 steps / degree.

I hope someone finds this useful.

Have fun!
Airic

Software update to 2.0.3

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Thank you all for submitting feedback and bugs! This allowed me to improve the software and here it is: alpha version 2.0.3! This release fixes some bugs and even adds some new stuff. I highly recommend updating to this release (Don’t forget to update the libraries too)! These are the changes:

Documentation
  •  updated the documentation (added small system-user-manual)
  • added some information about updating the software
 Software
  •  fixed a bug which started moves from the wrong position if not moved to home before
  • fixed a bug that moved the motor in the wrong direction when using the function “Move home (all)”
  • fixed a bug which caused the motor direction to change sporadically during motor jogging
  • added a new menu font and a font-option to the settings
  • Minor user interface changes
  • added all needed libraries into the repository

The biggest change, which you will see immediately, is the new font. I thought it might be nice to have a more readable and clear option. There is a new option for choosing the font so that you can go back to the old one if you like:

new font

I also started working on a Windows client for creating keyframe-based moves. This is in the very early stages but I hope to be able to release it before the summer. Main focus will be defining the bezier-curve based moves and then either save them as a files or directly submit the data to the USB-connected miniEngine.

…and as always – Have fun!
Airic

Documentation update

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Hello everyone,

I finally managed to write a short section for the documentation which explains how to use the system. The biggest problem until now was that there were no pictures or other explanations what the different buttons actually do. I tried to make everything as self explanatory as possible and hopefully succeeded (because I never received a singe question on how to use the new miniEngine). Anyways, here is a picture with a description of the different button functions. Some more info can be found in the updated documentation.

 buttonFunctions
[click to see the full resolution]

I also added all needed libraries into the GitHub repository, where you can download the whole project files, so that you have all you need in one download.

One more thing I’d like to post is a short but beautiful video by radixi, done with the new miniEngine 2 in some great Finnish winter (moon-) light.

Cheers,
Airic

Shades – a time-lapse movie

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Hello everyone,

I finally got enough clips for a 4min time-lapse video. I spent the last 1 ½ years on refining my equipment and shooting some clips when possible. Here is the result:

It was shot using the miniEngine – bot with motion control as well as simply on a tripod. All 3 existing version were used.

For those with some interest how my time-lapse workflow looks like – it includes the following tools:

  • Adobe Lightroom for the development of the single RAW pictures / video frames
  • LRTimelapse for de-flickering
  • Quicktime Pro for combining the frames to video-clips
  • Final Cut Pro for the video cut

Surely this is just one of many, many possible workflows but this is how I do it.

I hope you enjoy it!
Cheers,
Airic

miniE v2 release

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

I worked hard the last couple of days to get everything together and write an initial documentation. Now I am done and just released the miniEngine v2 to the public, to you. It is now available in the shop:

shop.airiclenz.com

big set

..and all required files are committed to GitHub:

github.com/airiclenz/miniEngine2

The ones of you that have any questions, please post them in the forum. I am happy to answer them there.

Cheers,
Airic

miniE2 boards are going online soon!

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Hello everyone,

I just ordered the first batch of shield PCBs for the shop. They will be blue and available as soon as they arrived. I’ll also order some needed parts so that I can offer sets for those of you that want to start quicker.

In the meantime I will continue working on the software. The first version which will be released will have motor control for 2 motors with the new Bézier-based-algorithms. Manual motor placement, higher motor speeds, all measurements in seconds and cm (no more conversions from steps to cm out in the field) and the better user interface are just some of the benefits which will be available in the first software release.

This first version will not be finished but be the first step to the system which I designed to be as capable as possible incl. daisy-chaining, video moves, external inputs and so on.

I am looking forward to getting it into your hands!

Cheers,
Airic