Using some specific settings and materials, we can print transparent objects with our FDM printers in the Fab Lab. These settings result in stronger and transparent prints, but take much longer and much more material than standard FDM printing. Below are some quick-start settings, further down are some deeper-dives into how and why those settings are how they are.
Category Archives: Tutorial
Axidraw V3/A3 Processing Integration
The Axidraw can be manipulated and controlled through Processing.
This is a brief look at how this can be implemented, download and unzip the files to continue.
If this is your first time using an Axidraw, I recommend checking out this tutorial first.

Draw Vector Images with Axidraw V3/A3 and Inkscape
AxiDraw translates vector lines and SVG files into physical movements, allowing you draw, paint, or write onto materials that you might not be able to normally.

USB HID Relay
No driver (Windows) USB relay.

Fusion 360 basics
Fusion 360 is a great, all-in-one parametric cad solution. Find out how to get started below.

JQ6500 MP3 Player Module
These little modules can be programmed to play mp3 sound bytes stored in their internal memory (8mb max).

Digi Spark / CJMCU Microcontroller
How to program a CJMCU with the Arduino IDE.

Thermal Camera for Arduino Boards
We have a couple of Thermal Cameras that can add heat imaging capabilities to Arduino projects. They have a low resolution 32×24 pixels, however the heat data image is still very useful if you need to track an object and measure its temp.

ESP32-CAM QR Code Scanner
This project combines two separate projects to get a system that acts as a WiFi Access point and web server to display QR codes scanned with an attached camera module.

Indesign Helpful Hints
Here are some useful hints we have used with our own projects:

Hand drawing to laser cutting with Inkscape
A quick overview of the workflow to get a hand-drawn part laser cut using Inkscape.

Creating custom monochrome graphics for micro-controller screens
Arduino code Converting images into byte arrays for mono-colour screens with microcontrollers. Best suited for static splash screens or basic animation on small screen sizes when using the Adafruit_GFX library with Arduino.

Electronics Basics
This brief tutorial gives some tips for working with electronic circuits and covers some common issues beginners can have.

Solar powered WiFi weather station with Google sheets upload
This project uses spare solar panels and an ESP-01 DHT11 module to gather weather data and upload it to a google spreadsheet.

Creating professional pinout diagrams
This is a great tutorial from Adafruit showing how to create professional pinout/wiring diagrams with free vector software Inkscape. It could also be transferred over to Illustrator.

Brilliant Smart WiFi plug
These smart plugs are a readily available, low-cost, and non-invasive home automation solution. Some models also have power monitoring.

D1 R32 – ESP32
An Esp32 micro-controller in an Arduino Uno footprint.

Estimating battery life of electronic designs
How to estimate the life of a battery-powered circuit design.
2.4″ TFT Touchscreen UNO module

Raspberry Pi & Touchscreens
Testing Raspberry Pi with touchscreens.

Circuit Mockups: TinkerCAD, Fritzing and Circuito
Overview
Designers need to communicate their designs to others. They need to be able to document their work so they can refer to it later or to allow others to build their designs. Regarding the design of circuits there is two great places to start to showcase your circuit design. If one solution does not completely fulfill al lot your circuit design it can be useful to use several to answer connection questions.

Handy Arduino boards & libraries

Engraving onto metals with a CO2 laser

STM32 (“Blue Pill”) Arduino programming
This will show you the way to program an STM32F1xx series microcontroller with the Arduino IDE (integrated development environment).

RFID and Arduino
This is a basic access control project to read and use the unique IDs of RFID cards including the University of Auckland ID cards.
It uses an RFIDRC522 module that can read 13.56MHz cards and the code is based on the RC522 Arduino library found HERE. It can also write data to the sectors of blank types of these cards for offline data storage or counting, but for this project, we will just be reading the ID numbers of the cards.

Complex 3D objects to 2D profiles
After a lot of researching here is a free way to create a 2D cut profile from a 3d surface.
Tinkercad: Embedding circuits on your blogs
Fusion 360: Rendering a turntable gif

Fusion 360 embedded test
How to embed Fusion 360 files into blog posts.

Interfacing Arduino and sensors with Unity
Overview
For this project, we attempted to interface hardware sensors with Unity to manipulate virtual objects and give feedback to hardware.
Goals for this project; To use a sensor to control the camera position in a basic Unity 3D scene, and to turn on and off a LED, based on keyboard inputs.
This is based off a YouTube tutorial by inScope Studios.
Files used are available at the end of this post.

Arduino Radar scanner
This uses Arduino and hardware to feed data into Processing for the graphical user interface.