Kickstarter Update #8: New Software Developments

Project Update #8: New Software Developments Posted by Rinnovated Design ♥ Like

Hey Backers! As we near the end of the campaign we are working long and hard to bring you up to speed on the progress we’ve made and provide you with a new print demonstration. Our software developer James took the time to sit down with us yesterday evening and go through the improvements he has made to the Peachy in the last few days. Watch the video below to see the in-depth interview with James & Rylan: http://youtu.be/mAPQjqKWVx8 In the video, we mentioned calibrating the printer, but how did we do it? James wrote a program that allows the user to drive the laser around with their mouse and record the current audio output with a mouse click. By clicking on known points on a grid, this can be used as part of a linear regression to calculate a model for translating the desired laser location to the audio outputs necessary to reach that location. This lets us easily account for variations between printers. Stay tuned for a hardware developments update later this evening, and a print demonstration soon thereafter! Thanks, The Peachy Printer Team.

I'm amazed at the fast progress on this one. Great to see progress, and especially a bit of information on the technical problems and solutions that have been found.

With the calibration, I'm wondering whether you could do something like have a printed grid in the build container, point a webcam at it, and then refine the laser positioning automatically until it can follow the grid. No need for any human interaction, apart from placing the grid - and this also makes re-calibration trivial.