Exercise 09 Mechanical design


Requirement

Forming of group

There are 9 participants this year in Fablab @ SP, Singapore. We have agreed to form 2 groups. My group mates are Mark, Tham, and Kaichi. We have decided to make a 2-axis machine that would move a pen to draw a square. As this is a group project spread over 2 weeks, we have decided to split up the workload as such: Tham and Kaichi will design th/e housing of the fabnet kit we received from Fab Academy and assemble the machine. Mark and myself will explore the programming component.


Workload Distribution

As this is a group project spread over 2 weeks (30 Mar - 13 Apr 2016), we have decided to split up the workload as such:

Links to my team-mates' contribution:

My contribution

In this group project, I was involved in the following specific areas:


Working on Python

For the first week, I spent most of the time figuring how to set up the python environment so that I can run the py files. Referring to the Tutorial on wxGestalt, I found that there are many steps to prepare the environment for programming. I need to use Python 2.7 instead of 3.5 because the programming syntax of the example files we are working on is written for python 2. So far, I have completed the steps listed below and installed the relevant libraries of the packages.
  1. Install Python 2.7
  2. Install pip on windows. At command prompt, type python get-pip.py.
  3. Install pyserial 3.0.1. At command prompt, type pip install pyserial.
  4. Install pygestalt.
  5. Install FTDI drivers for windows. PDF Instruction
  6. Install wxPython 32bit for python 2.7
  7. Execute wxgestalt
Setting up the environment for virtual machine


git submodule update --init gestalt
  yoruichin@CHIN-T450S MINGW64 ~/dropbox/fab/week 9/wxgestaltlib/wxGestalt (master                 )
$ git submodule update --init gestalt
Submodule 'gestalt' (https://github.com/imoyer/gestalt.git) registered for path 'gestalt'
Cloning into 'gestalt'...
remote: Counting objects: 573, done.
remote: Total 573 (delta 0), reusReed 0 (ceidelta 0),vin pack-rg oeusedbje 573
Receiving objects: 100% (573/573), 13.00 MiB | 1.46 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (254/254), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Submodule path 'gestalt': checked out 'b5848c8fe97fd390c5ddb8e3b79a68b62f851c65'
  

Installing libraries


Video Editing

My equipment is basically my trusted iphone 6 and a MEFOTO mk10 tripod stand. The video are recorded in MOV format and downloaded to my computer via a lightning cable. I used Windows Movie Maker to do the video-editing. Once the videos are loaded into the timeline, I can edit to trim the clips, add captions, add music and simple animations. This software is quite restrictive, and cannot do many fancy overlays like those in the market, but it is good enough for me to do documentation of my projects.


MEFOTO MK10 tripod
Windows Movie Maker
Video editing timeline


Website Documentation

I have used similar webpage theme as my personal page for the group pages. Using sublime text 2 to format my content, and photoshop to edit my photos I updated the group page and made the presentation slide for the group using Microsoft Powerpoint.


git bash records of the update of mtm group 2 pages
Webpages done using sublime text 2
Presentation slide created by Microsoft Powerpoint then saved as PNG format


For a more detailed documentation of our group project, check out the group page.

MTM Group Page »


References