tutorials News - Page 13 of 46 - CNX Software

November 4, 2019November 8, 2019 by Karl Johnson - 24 Comments

Sovol SV01 Upgrade with BigTreeTech SKR mini E3 Control Board

Sovol SV01 Upgrade: Bigtreetech SKR mini E3

Karl here with a quick upgrade guide. The one complaint I had in the review of the SV01 3D printer was it was loud. Today we are going to look at resolving part of the problem by replacing the Creality board with the BigTreeTech SKR mini E3 V1.2 control board sold on Amazon for around $37. Fan noise at a later date. This board is ideal because the SD card, USB, and screws line up for nearly a perfect replacement. I did not bother hooking up the filament runout sensor. I have never found them particularly useful and always ensure I start with enough filament and bypassed it for the review. The board comes with TMC2209 drivers which significantly reduce the stepper motor noise as well as stop any salmon skin. SKR Mini E3 Warning This board is a replacement for the board found on the Ender 3. Below is […]

October 27, 2019October 27, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Changing Ubuntu Apt Mirror from the Command Line, and the Lack of Arm64 Mirrors

When you install Ubuntu on a computer, you’d normally go through the installation ISO which guides you through a wizard where you select your location among other things, and that means you get connected to the mirror closest to your location allowing timely updates. But for those of us who flash Ubuntu images on Arm SBC’s, the mirror is normally fixed to the one set by the developer be it in China or Slovakia, or defaults to the US mirror. It still works, but it can be slower than necessary. In a computer, an easy way to change that from Ubuntu desktop to launch Software & Update program and change the download from field to a mirror in your country or neighboring country as shown below. But I’ve found myself mostly connecting to boards over SSH since it’s easier that way for reviews. One way to change the mirror would […]

October 12, 2019 by Karl Johnson - 4 Comments

How I Adopted a Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway on my Existing Home Network

Hey Karl here with a quick write up on how I adopted a Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway (USG) into my existing home network. I ran into a few issues so I wanted to share and hopefully help someone else. I have had 2 Unifi access points cover my home for several years now and I recently upgraded my internet to 100 Mbps. I was maxing out at about 95 Mbps with downloads on my existing 100 Mbps Linksys router and I knew I was leaving some bandwidth on the table. Spectrum is my internet provider and I have always got more than what I paid for. I placed an order on Amazon and 24 hours later it was delivered. I have a couple of things that made this challenging. First I run my network on a 10.0.0.1/24 subnet with devices that have static IP address and I host my own […]

October 3, 2019October 3, 2019 by Siji Sunny - 5 Comments

PicoLibC is a Lightweight C library for Embedded Systems

Well-known developer, Keith Packard has recently announced the launch of “picolibc” through his blog. Picolibc is a C Library for embedded systems which is suitable for small micro-controllers, and this standard C library API’s allows to run even in low memory (RAM) devices. This is an upgraded version of “newlib-nano” with few interesting changes which includes replacement of “stdio” lib with ATMEL-specific printf code adopted from avrlibc. As part of this library, Keith also launched picocrt, which is responsible for initializing memory and invoking various constructors before calling its own C program, the main function. Features picolibc is a revised version of newlibc, without full-fledged stdio lib and uses lightweight stdio lib from avrlibc, which is more suitable to low memory embedded devices. Meson build-system eases the build process of picolibc source tree for various target platform and hardware. Updated the math test suite to use Glibc as a reference […]

September 5, 2019July 8, 2020 by Karl Johnson - 57 Comments

How to Easily Calibrate Retraction in 3D Printers

[Update July 2020: It is now recommended to use Calibration Generator program instead of the Google Doc Spreadsheet in this article] Hey, Karl here with a short article on retraction tuning. I really enjoy reviewing 3D printers and all things 3D printing with one exception…. when I have to calibrate retraction (aka retraction tuning). It takes so much time. What is Retraction? While 3D printing on a standard FDM printer, the filament is pushed with an extruder motor that has a gear attached. It pushes the filament, either directly into the hotend assembly or through a Bowden tube to the hotend. Molten plastic is then layered to produce a model. When it is printing nearly all prints require non-extruding movements. During the extruding moves pressure builds up and in order to stop stringing and blobbing during non-printing moves, a retraction happens. There are 2 main variables that affect this: the […]

September 1, 2019September 3, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

How to Sandbox an arm64 GCC on aarch64 Hardware with armv7 Userspace

CNXSoft: Guest post by Blu about setting up arm64 toolchain on 64-bit Arm hardware running a 32-bit Arm (Armv7) rootfs. Life is short and industry progress is never fast enough in areas we care about. That’s an observation most of us are familiar with. One would think that by now most aarch64 desktops would be running arm64 environments, with multi-arch support when needed. Alas, as of late 2019, chromeOS on aarch64 is still shipping an aarch64 kernel and an armhf userspace. And despite the fine job by the good folks at chromebrew, an aarch64 chromeOS machine in dev mode ‒ an otherwise excellent road-warrior ride, is stuck with 32-bit armhf. Is that a problem, some may ask? Yes, it is ‒ aarch64 is the objectively better arm ISA outside of MCUs, from gen-purpose code to all kinds of ISA extensions, SIMD in particular. That shows in contemporary compiler support and […]

August 26, 2019August 25, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Getting Started with ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit and Home Assistant

ANAVI Gas Detector is an ESP8266 based board designed for MQ gas sensors supported by Arduino. This allows you to easily monitor air quality, or more accurately air conductivity using MQ-135 sensor as part of the starter kit either visually on the OLED display, or through your smartphone or computer using MQTT via automation platform such as Home Assistant. Leon Anavi sent me an ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit to have a look, and I’ll report my experience with the kit using it standalone, and through Home Assistant. Starter Kit Unboxing The kit contains the open-source hardware, ESP8266 based ANAVI Gas Detector board, a plastic stand, an OLED display, a USB to serial adapter, a gas sensor, and a few KiCad and ANAVI stickers. The board itself comes with an ESP8266MOD module, features a micro USB port for power, a reset button, four LEDs, a UART console, a 4-pin GPIO […]

August 21, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Getting Started with Sipeed M1 based Maixduino Board & Grove AI HAT for Raspberry Pi

Last year we discovered Kendryte K210 processor with a RISC-V core and featuring AI accelerators for machine vision and machine hearing. Soon after, Sipeed M1 module was launched with the processor for aroud $10. Then this year we started to get more convenient development board featuring Sipeed M1 module such as Maixduino or Grove AI Hat. Seeed Studio sent me the last two boards for review. So I’ll start by showing the items I received, before showing how to get started with MicroPython and Arduino code. Note that I’ll be using Ubuntu 18.04, but development in Windows is also possible. Unboxing I received two packages with a Maixduino kit, and the other “Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing”. Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing Let’s start with the second. The board is a Raspberry Pi HAT with Sipeed M1 module, a 40-pin Raspberry Pi header, 6 grove connectors, as well […]