Ben sent me this writeup of his progress on his Rep Rap Prusa printer. Here’s his progress using one of the teensyduinos that PJRC: Electronic Projects with Components sent us.

I am currently building a rep rap Prusa 3D printer and one feature I want to add is a Graphic Display to display the nozzle temperature and the heated bed temperature. Once I had the Teensy in my hands, I rummaged through my parts bin and found a 128×64 graphic LCD.

As an Arduino newbie, I was blown away how easy the Arduino environment is to get up and running. Within minutes, I was able to get the IDE installed and the Libraries installed for the Teensy.

Using the GLCD example on the Teensy’s website, I populated my breadboard. The Crystal Fontz LCD (CFAG12864B-YYH-N) I used in the project has the NT7107C driver, not the KS0108 found in the GLCD example. The pin out on the Display ended up being different, but worked just fine.

My plans are to use the I2C output on the GEN7 Prusa electronics to send the temperature data to the Teensy over the i2c bus. For prototyping, I used the “Bus Pirate” to send i2c commands to the teensy to simulate the GEN7 electronics.

We’ve had a few Air Conditioning mishaps lately. We’ve also had a problem with the air being turned down and left down for days at a time. So to combat this problem today I ventured into Home Depot and picked up a Honeywell Programmable Thermostat. It’s a very simple and basic 5-2 day thermostat. The 5-2 day means that it can have 2 different schedules, one for the week and one for the weekend. The thermostat boasts that it could save us up to 33% on our energy bill depending on our region and if it’s used as directed. We’ll definitely have to see about that.

The actual installation process is supposed to take 15 minutes according to the packaging. This is the first thermostat I’ve installed so I went and watched a couple of videos and was pretty confident I could figure it out.

We’ve got our new thermostat all installed and programmed to keep the space at 74 degrees. The installation process took about 20 minutes. Had some assistance from Chris and Sonny and we got it all worked out. We’ll see how our bill turns out over the next couple of months!

Old Thermostat wiring

Old Thermostat

New Wired Thermostat

Installed and Programmed

Haunted by old computer parts? Frightened by the prospect of having them go to waste? This Friday, May 13th at 7pm we’re going to break the curse of broken electronics with our first de soldering class! Come by the space and you’ll learn how to exorcise the demons that plague your old hardware by learning how to remove solder and reclaim your parts for good!

Image copyright Becky Stern

There is no cost to participate, however any donations to the group would be greatly appreciated.

You won’t need a young priest or an old priest, simply bring the following supplies if you can (if you cannot, don’t worry, we will share!):

• Soldering Irons
• Picks (dental type)
• Alligator Clips
• Tweezers
• Solder Suckers
• Stainless Steel/Brass scrub pads
• Circuits that you wish to desolder

We will provide participants with the following items and our assurances that they are free of any bad luck:

• Solder wick
• Solder flux
• Brass wool
• Kapton tape
• Helping Hands
• Alcohol (for cleaning flux)

All black cats, broken mirrors, and open umbrellas are welcome! Sign-up at http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events

As a special thanks for the MidsouthMakers assistance during SoutheastCon, the University of Memphis Student Branch of IEEE would like to welcome the MidsouthMakers to come to the Engineering Technology building for a demonstration of some projects we have been working on. We will be starting at the normal meeting time of 7pm, in Room 227, on the second floor of ET. The meeting will take the place of the normal Friday, May 6th meeting. We will be demoing the robot we took to competition this year, as well as one of our CNC machines, a programmable robot arm, and a professional grade 3D printer.

The University of Memphis is located in midtown Memphis, near the intersection of Poplar and Goodlett. The Engineering Technology building is across the street from the large parking lot on Central Avenue. Attached is a link to a map of the University of Memphis campus, with the Engineering Technology building highlighted in red.

Here are a few pictures from our recent LAN party and Cleanup Day in the shop. See our flicker photo stream for more!