A Digital Readout For My Bridgeport Mill

A number of years ago I landed some encoders for the X, Y, and Z axis of my Bridgeport milling machine. At that point I got a US Digital I/O board, an old 286 PC, and a C compiler and proceeded to cobble together a DRO (digital readout).

That combination served for many years, but, during that time I had read a lot about EMC2 CNC software.

Recently, I had the occasion to move my mill and with the long term intent to convert the mill to CNC I decided to take the plunge and get a taste for EMC2 (now LinuxCNC).

A little research and a newer PC (Pentium4) with a parallel port and I was easily able to create a really nice DRO.

If you look close you’ll recognise the background of the screen. Yep, that’s Ubuntu 10.04. LinuxCNC can be downloaded as an ISO image. Once that’s burned to a CD or USB stick it can be live booted and installed.

There is a bit of Python code you can find on the LinuxCNC forums that is the DRO you see in the pictures.

So, basically, a couple of encoders, an old PC and LinuxCNC ends up with a really quick and easy DRO.

I’ll add more detail later, feel free to ask questions.

Using An Epson NX127 With Ubuntu

So I was wondering through the local Sam’s Warehouse Club and saw a special deal on the Epson NX127 All-in-one printer/scanner. I did some quick research on my Android and found NX series listed in the known printers to work with Ubuntu, but not specifically the NX127. But, for $39.97, I couldn’t resist.

Well, the printing worked right out of the box after using the printer setup accessed from the Admin menu. Be aware, Epson does not include a USB cable, but, it’s just a standard USB A-B cable.

The scanner took a bit more effort.

Basic Xane as installed with Ubuntu does not see the scanner. After some Googling and setup attempts, it didn’t appear to be supported. During the research I found ImageScan! from Avasys.

Click here to get to the Imagescan! page for getting what worked for me.

After selecting Epson Stylus NX127 you’ll be presented with a web page with printer and scanner drivers.

From this page download two .deb files, you can use your browser Edit>Find menus to find these lines The second line in each case being an actual link to get the file:

Note: I’ve included this text since the page is really long, with names and links that will make you cross-eyed. I’d have done links, but all their links are java script.

deb package
iscan-data_1.4.0-1_all.deb

deb 32bit package [libltdl7] (for Ubuntu 8.10 or later)
iscan_2.26.0-3.ltdl7_i386.deb

Also download the manual found on the page as well:

Installation method
Please refer to the userg_revL_e.pdf

Follow the instructions in the manual for install. Try it before you go through the chmod instructions they discuss, you may not need to do that.

After the install, a new app called Imagescan! will be available in the Graphics menu.

So far I’ve found it works pretty good.

Is this printer top of the line? Obviously not. But, for day-to-day printing and scanning, it’s fine. In fact for many I suspect it will be acceptable. On the other hand, for $40, how can you complain?

For the record, I’m using Ubuntu 10.04.

NOOK Sideloads and an SD card

So I just got my new NOOK. Since there is plenty of free content on the web I plan on getting my reading material from sites like the Project Gutenburg and ManyBooks .

That means you have to understand how to sideload from a PC (in my case running Ubuntu) to the NOOK.

The good news is it under Ubuntu and Windows when you plug the usb cable in, the NOOK’s main memory and the sdcard (if installed) show up as storage devices. This allows drag and drop from the PC to the NOOK…with a couple of caveats.

First one is the format of the ebook file has to one NOOK supports. No biggy, it does support several.

Second, while you can put stuff in the B&N content folder on the NOOK main device, the NOOK ignores non-B&N material. In fact it will delete non-B&N material on restart (I don’t know the limits of this, didn’t try). So the material on the main device needs to be put in the My Documents folder.

It appears, content on the SdCard can go anywhere.

The content on both main and SDCard show up under the My Documents pick when viewing the NOOK.

Third, if any of the edocs has what the NOOK thinks is a problem, the NOOK can just hang when checking for new content. So if you cancel out of the check for new content it never finds books added after the bad one. Similarly, this can also happen even after a complete power off, because, it may see the file (thus it shows up as available content) but can’t be indexed, and doesn’t see the next. This is probably a bug in the 1.4 firmware, since it apparently was not an issue in previous revs.

The best way to avoid some of this is to use Calibre library management software on your PC. It’s open source and is available for many operating systems.

Ubuntu Linux Setup with Comcast

Non-Windows/Non-Mac with COMCAST Internet

Having just got my brother & sister in-law setup with a brand spanking new PC running Ubuntu 10.04 they needed to get to the internet.

In their case that means dealing with COMCAST.

So in anticipation of my arrival, my brother-in-law (BiL) went off to the local COMCAST depot and they presented him with a modem, a CD, and a cable. It didn’t even include a wall wart. After digging in the junk bin and finding the appropriate voltage wart, the modem didn’t even power up. It was completely dead.

So they gave him a credit for the inconvenience and he showed up at the depot and exchanged the dead one for one with a wart.

Back at the ranch, we plugged it in and booted the pc. Ubuntu was set to do DHCP and the network information showed it was getting an IP address, but no default router or DNS address.

At this point I got into on-line chat with COMCAST from their support website.

NOTE: At no point, did I mention what OS I was using. Here’s the important parts of my interaction with them:

• I stated that I had powered up the modem I had received from COMCAST and checked my network settings.
• I stated that there was an IP address and no Default router or DNS address.
• The COMCAST “Analyst” asked for the MAC address of the modem and what the primary email address was to be.
• He then “provisioned” the modem and instructed me to shut down the PC and unplug the modem.
• Then he instructed to power on the modem and wait until all lights were on, then boot the PC.

When the PC booted and I logged in, I checked the network info again and all was good. It had an IP, Default Router, primary, and secondary DNS addresses.
Checked things out with Firefox and life was good.

Update 6/9/2010: An hour after the above seemed to be ok, it lost the Default Route and DNS addresses and after many resets of the modem and reboots of the pc, no joy. The modem refuses to DHCP any after the IP and broadcast address.

Update 6/14/2010: Comcast sent out a tech. He checked something at the pole, then came in the house. He looked at the first splitter and re-terminated the cable. The modem them came on line, but was “in the garden”. He had the office “push it out of the garden” (his words, not mine). After that it seems to be fine.

Note: During our conversation, he says: “You have a Comcast phone modem, why didn’t you just use the RJ45 jack on it for your computer?” I said: “You mean I could just run some CAT5 and skip the Motorola modem?” He said: “Sure, I have the cat5, connectors and a crimp tool, but, I’m not allowed to use it.”

Go figure…

Adventures with Virtualbox

This story begins with a new PC. This new PC has only sata drives and I had a pre SP2 WindowsXP CD. There are several ways to deal with this situation and I had already burned a couple of coasters attempting to slipstream the WinXp CD up to SP3.

Being a bit frustrated and out of CDs until I got to a store, I loaded Ubuntu 9.04 on the machine. I needed to run a couple of apps that only run in under Windows. I suspected the heavy use of hardware (particularly USB and MIDI) by these apps would stymie WINE. I decided to see how Virtualbox (http://www.virtualbox.org/) would handle the load.

The short answer is; after some tweaking, it appears to work just fine.

A Mac Sound Musing
Sound Levels

Sound levels are always a big issue, both for theatrical performances and live music. In the case of live theater it’s always getting the actors to be heard. For musicals, getting the talent heard over the music and for non-musicals getting them heard in general.

The big debate is always to mic or not. Whether to use wireless mics, hanging mics, floor (boundary) mics or some combination thereof. In general hanging and floor might give some aid to a drama, they will just make it worse for musicals. And, while I’ve worked with some talent who do know how to project, these are a small percentage. Even they have little hope of competing with amplified instruments.

For live music, it’s typically a case of too much. This can not be made as a blanket statement because for most acoustic performances getting the sound balanced between vocals and instruments is usually agreed upon by the vocalists and musicians. When there are amplifiers involved…things change.

Doing live music is always a new experience. Most of the time the loudness is indirectly proportional to the length of time the musicians have been performing. (Read: younger bands usually want it louder.)

I don’t know where the idea that louder is better comes from. I grew up with Jimi Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, and Deep Purple; I didn’t get it then, don’t get it now. My observation has been, that most musicians who want ear bleeding loud should really be hoping the rest of the band covers their poor performance.

There are some acoustical physics and physiology invloved of course.

The later is why most performers ask for higher monitor levels as the concert progresses. Most bands today, especially what I call teen angst bands, play at sound levels that surpass the levels audiology has determined will damage the hearing mechanisms of the human ear. In short, over the period of the show the ear gets less and less sensitive to sound and needs more to get the same output to the brain. As the sensitivity to loudness decreases so does frequency response of the ear. Note: this is a very simplified statement of what happens.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard “We need more vocals”.

Typically, that is NOT what is really needed…