In a quest to earn a fine bottle of scotch (and help my friend Marty out with a project), I modified the Chumby web browser to be a full-screen kiosk. To make it work, just grab this file, unzip the contents into a usb stick or SD card, place the card in your Insignia, and reboot. You can change the URL that it loads by modifying the file debugchumby (use your desktop computer, the Chumby doesn’t seem to like writing to USB).

This can be used to make nice interfaces for the Chumby without having to learn flash or compile anything. Simply make a nice whiz-bang HTML page, and you should be good to go!

Source code for this super simple browser is here. Note that this is for the 8″ Insignia Infocast branded machine. You can probably get it to work with the other Chumbys, but will need to recompile. Have fun!

Gareth just finished a Make: Projects version of the one-hour coasterbot build that I created for a contest last year. Thanks, Gareth!

Lem Fugitt from Robots Dreams stopped by the Botcave and interviewed me. We also talked about MakerBot:

Thanks, Lem!

I’m working on a three part, printable model (top, bottom, actuator arm) that can be made into a little electronic puppet by adding a cheap servo and snapping it together. It’s an adaptation of DesignGlut’s Salt and Pepper Shakers. Model files coming when I get back to my other computer.

Keepon came to visit the Botcave last week, so I made him a hat that looks like his own head.

Yesterday I made this progress meter attachment for the 3d printer that I have at work, that rotates to show me how far along my print is:

Love 3d printing with your Thing-o-Matic, but wish there were a better way to see how your print is progressing? Well, today is your lucky day- if you’ve got a spare hobby servo (the one in the Unicorn works great), then you can make your very own progress gauge!

Source code and directions on Thingiverse.

Today I designed a toilet paper roll holder:

Tired of having to hunt for that roll of soft tissue every time you do your business? If only there were a fashionable hook upon which you could place this precious velvet!

Fortunately for you, oh bachelor or bachelorette, Science has heard your cries and has an answer! What you are seeking is called a toilet paper roll holder, and they are none to difficult to acquire! Sensible people would go to the store and buy a nice wooden or metal one to match their decor, but who are we kidding? You’re either desperate or have no sense of taste, so join the club and print yourself one now!

This design is inspired by Charles Pax’s filament spool holder. You’ll need a Thingomatic with a slightly taller than average (116mm+) build height in order to construct it.

Bre challenged us to make something using 3dtin. I came up with and printed this marble maze, using the ball from a bearing. Next I want to make a 3d version of the maze as a blind cube, with holes on two sides and ??? in the middle. A generative version might be even more fun…

There was a time when the gangsta ruled the botcave. Models were downloaded, plastic was melted and re-formed, the gangsta represented, and all was rosy and cheerful.

Those days are over. The snakesta is here to stay.

I designed this snake gangster (‘snakesta‘) model by combining yzorg’s gangsa with Zomboe’s snake. For some context, the gangsta model has been a pretty popular test print at the botcave, and I love the snake model because it is flexible, so I decided to put them both together into one awesomer print. Awesome? Awesome!

I’d love a ‘put this on that’ kind of script for Thingiverse, perhaps if no one makes one I’ll try to whip up some frontend to OpenSCAD.

The lighting for this shot is a single incandescent desk lamp, maybe 1 foot from the model, with two pieces of cardboard to block all but a slit of light from passing through. I used my cell phone (!) to snap a color version of the shot, then used the GIMP to adjust color levels, convert to monochrome, and burn the edges of the image.

I’ve been joking about making a new case for my wireless router for a long time. The idea was that that would be shaped like a McDonalds store, with a little sign out front that says how many billion bytes (or whatever) have been served. Tonight, I decided to see how hard it would be to cobble together the technical portion of the project using an Asus WL-520 router running MightyOhm’s OpenWRT build and an old display that I had sitting around.

Using my python library as a reference for how to use the display, and my XML parsing script for ash, I was able to cobble together a working project quickly. My source code is after the break.

Now, to complete the vision, I just need to make some golden arches…

screen.sh is the script that figures out the amount of information transmitted by the network interface, and the second file is an example cron job to make an update every minute.

cat /root/screen.sh

#!/bin/ash

TTY_DEV=/dev/tts/0
NETWORK_DEVICE=wl0

# Configure the serial port
stty -F ${TTY_DEV} 9600 cs8

# Turn on the led backlight
echo -e "\x14\xff" > ${TTY_DEV}

INFO=`ifconfig ${NETWORK_DEVICE}`
TMP=${INFO#*TX\ bytes:}
TX_BYTES=${TMP%\ (*}

TX_MBYTES=$(($TX_BYTES/1000000))

echo -en "\x0C" > ${TTY_DEV}
echo -n "McRouter        " > ${TTY_DEV}
echo -n "Served " ${TX_MBYTES} "MB" > ${TTY_DEV}

cat /etc/crontabs/root

* * * * * /root/screen.sh