[Mecanix]

Agree this arduino ide is pretty cool, used it quite a lot in past. Rather useful and quick if you fancy using the built-in arduino.h, lots of methods already written. Got a few compilers here in fact, its depressing at times. All depends what I work on really (mostly SPI though). I toast those ICs with an AVR-51 (avrdude/USB ISP?). Was forced to use this prog'mer for a Keil I needed to burn a few years ago and stick'ed to it, I guess.... Affordable, gets the job done.

Thanks for the link up btw, time to revisit. All up for new ways of doingthings!

[__Britt]

What it doesn't have is a debugger. For that you do need something like Atmel Studio and something that speaks debugWIRE.

[Mecanix]

Several lib on github in both C/C# for enabling chip's hardware DW (search debugWire serial) (credits to the authors).
I've not used much of it as my projects are often rather simple but it can come handy to 'un-brick' a device, which I had to do more than once (I think lol)
ps; needs a ft232 or ch340, few passives, and that's pretty much it.

[maxspongebob]

I looked and looked for a cable/connector for a micro usb3 but could not find one. Where did you get yours?

Instead of a loop in the main code, you could do a rising edge interrupt driven trigger. Then you don't have to worry about the timing, the output will always go active withing x number of clock cycles of the switch opening. Also, if it is interrupt driven you can sleep the UC while not doing anything for the ultimate low power mode.

Anyhow, l am looking forward to the next version.

[maxspongebob]

If you never tried Eclipse on UBUNTU, you should. It is a PIA to setup but I really like it. I've been trying to get off of Microsoft for a while and jumped in with both feet for software developement a couple years ago.

BTW, Mecanix, what CAM system are you using?

[Mecanix]

I looked and looked for a cable/connector for a micro usb3 but could not find one. Where did you get yours?

10P Mini USB, not micro. Possibly why you couldn't find them!

Excellent idea on the prog part, Max. So much else you can do with those now that they are SPI interfaced. Friend here is planing on developing his digitizing point cloud off MACH3's modbus registers... :/ So far ahead of me, hope he'll share cuz I need that too.

Parts are starting to come out (tol max 0.02mm). Although yet to be anodized which I plan on doing later this week when I have them all turned. So... one for you, one for a friend, and one for me! I'll make more later... I think...

(edit: added the pinout for that conn, much to play with in there so, go-go crazy!)

[dharmic]

Another vote for Eclipse (+ gcc and avrdude) here.

I generally do my initial prototyping researchy / play / proof of concept stuff in Arduino because it's fast to get something up and running.

When I know I have a winning approach, I re-write or port it across to bare metal C++ using the Eclipse environment. That way I don't have all the Arduino furniture doing unpredictable things in the background on a production build. I use this combo because it's free and works on a Mac

I tend to not use a debugger with AVRs much, mucks about too much with the timing for my liking.

As with maxspongebob, if all I was doing with that chip was a signal debounce and cleanup I'd be doing it entirely in an ISR for one of the interrupt enabled pins. But whatever works - I can't imagine a whole lot of overtravel even including loop times.

Next challenge is to re-do it with a little ARM, say a coretex M0 or M4, with built-in bluetooth stack. Add a little battery and Qi charging rig for when it's on the tool rack and connect directly with the control computer

[Mecanix]

Another vote for Eclipse (+ gcc and avrdude) here.

I generally do my initial prototyping researchy / play / proof of concept stuff in Arduino because it's fast to get something up and running.

When I know I have a winning approach, I re-write or port it across to bare metal C++ using the Eclipse environment. That way I don't have all the Arduino furniture doing unpredictable things in the background on a production build. I use this combo because it's free and works on a Mac

I tend to not use a debugger with AVRs much, mucks about too much with the timing for my liking.

As with maxspongebob, if all I was doing with that chip was a signal debounce and cleanup I'd be doing it entirely in an ISR for one of the interrupt enabled pins. But whatever works - I can't imagine a whole lot of overtravel even including loop times.

Next challenge is to re-do it with a little ARM, say a coretex M0 or M4, with built-in bluetooth stack. Add a little battery and Qi charging rig for when it's on the tool rack and connect directly with the control computer

ok ok, I'll have a look at Eclipse but just for you two. I already mentioned I'm forced to work with several (too many?) compilers already and it was kinda depressive lol
Agree about that Arduino furniture being pretty unpredictable especially for a time dependent application. Can't recall how often I had to figure out where those extra 10~20ns 'random jumps' were coming from when zoomed in on the scope (e.g. timer, pin state methods exec code, etc etc). Reason I've dumped that Arduino IDE and switched to Atmel Studio quite a while ago in fact. No hate on the Arduino IDE guys, I still think it's killer (human readable and all, just wow).

"Next challenge" is a strain sensor powered probe. Already prototyped the circuit with a 1~1000 precision instrumentation amplifier (no noise, no drift!) and already have those micro gauges in hands. Works flawlessly other than that start-up drift caused by self-heating. For that project I might actually use the full 32bits (Stm or Arm, we'll see...). Cool lil'early winter project that I'll also document here... if all goes well with the current project

(Irrelevant; just adding visual to show how minuscule those 350Omhs 1mmx1mm gauges are compared to that SOP8)

[__Britt]

Um... let's see here... I've got Xcode; Arduino; BBEdit (where I actually edit the code that the Arduino IDE feeds to gcc); MPLabX (hmm... I suspect it needs updating, too... last modified date: 1/9/2018... tells you how much I use PIC chips); something from National Instruments (I think I loaded that to try and talk to my DS1054z?); I suppose OpenSCAD kinda-sorta qualifies?... SystemWorkbench for targeting STM32s (haven't used it much though)... somewhere in here there's a command-line-only version of gcc for AVR as well... and I just downloaded Icestudio to play around with ICE40 FPGAs. Used to have FreePascal on here... not sure why I'm not finding it now?

In VMware; there's a copy of Visual Studio; Code::Blocks and mingw; Atmel Studio; and Xilinx ISE (now there's an unpleasant one to download... IIRC, it weighed in at over 7GB - but when you get the dev board, you gotta download the IDE for it, right?).

Previously I've used, on various machines, Tandy Color Basic (level 2, IIRC), Tandy Color Logo (multi-threaded! You could actually write primitive games with multiple turtles running their own execution threads and it had collision detection and custom turtle shapes as well), whatever the ROM basic was on a TRS-80 model 4, GWBasic (remember that one?), Turbo Pascal (still have fond memories of TP7), Turbo C; Turbo Assembler; Microsoft Assembler, Amiga Basic (still have that A2000 - yes, I've removed the battery), an Amiga C compiler that I can't recall the name of; Lightspeed/Think C; Metrowerks Codewarrior on the Power Mac platform as well as on a BeBox (still have that one too... and yes, I checked - there's no battery soldered to the motherboard); and (I suppose it counts) User RPL on an HP48 (pre-internet... didn't even know at the time that there was such a thing as System RPL lurking in there).

So... um... yeah.

[Mecanix]

ok, impressive stuff... you've obviously been there done that twice+ Feels like I won't be half way that list even when I'll be 80+... and there I was, complaining about my 4~5 different compilers LOL

and yes, GWBasic, I do remember. Good god man lolll

[__Britt]

Well, I've been programming since I was 13 (badly, but, well, I was 13), and my 6th grade teacher gave me a hand-me-down TRS-80 Color Computer (model 2? I think? I don't think it was a model 3... another one I still have in the closet somewhere) with a couple of cartridges - including that version of Logo. (Thanks, Mrs A. !) So, yeah; I've been exposed to all sorts of development environments over the years. Haven't managed to get my hands on anything big-iron, though... I suspect if I came home one day with a System/360 or something like that the family would do something drastic... they just about had a conniption when the Shizouka followed me home (I swear! I never thought I'd win that eBay auction... especially not for the low-ball bid I put in on it!)

Oh, four others I didn't mention - HyperCard, SuperCard, Director and FileMaker w/AppleScript. Can't forget those!

[RCaffin]

just adding visual to show how minuscule those 350Omhs 1mmx1mm gauges are
Source and cost for those SGs?
I have larger ones, but they were a bit too big for it to be worthwhile.

I do have a full electronics workbench, and a full CNC shop too.
I used to have a number of PDP-11s and a VAX or two at home, but I gave them to the museum.

Cheers
Roger

[Mecanix]

just adding visual to show how minuscule those 350Omhs 1mmx1mm gauges are
Source and cost for those SGs?
I have larger ones, but they were a bit too big for it to be worthwhile.

I do have a full electronics workbench, and a full CNC shop too.
I used to have a number of PDP-11s and a VAX or two at home, but I gave them to the museum.

Cheers
Roger

Those SGs were custom ordered in 350ohms for that particular size, took 3 days, go figure. Sourced them from the same local manufacturer/supplier who does valve sensors for the co I work for, that does not constitute they were cheap :/
To my knowledge you can order oem or custom made from quite a few manufacturers specializing in SGs, most if not all offers that option.

Cool to have access to instruments and machine-tools! Not sure I have a 'full' CNC shop like yours but at least I got a few (personal home shop + Co's R&D shop). So many cool tools at the company, although more than half of them we aren't even allowed to approach or use (precision turning centers and CMM rooms, for instance).

And in the 'miniscule' News Today; rushed back home to get those parts programmed and turned (6hrs total, tol max 0.02mm). Those little 3 poles... slippery stuff. In the other news, my v1.03 PCB shipped out today so I should get this in <3days!

[maxspongebob]

Question?

Are the 3 pins electrically isolated from the shaft?

[Mecanix]

Question?

Are the 3 pins electrically isolated from the shaft?

Yea they'll need too. Anodizing of the main shaft holding those 3 pins was part of the design. The pins are not anodized and therefore independent (and conductive).
Bet you are familiar with anodizing already. In case not, the anodizing surface treatment renders the AL completely non-conductive. Creates a resistant oxidation layer of roughly 7~10 microns in thickness.

[maxspongebob]

You could make a ring that goes around the shaft that holds the pins. Use Delrin and they will be isolated.

[Mecanix]

No thank you very much!

See excessive thermal expansion between 20dC~30dC (10dC diff.). The worst materials you can possibly use to engineer a probe, or any precision measurement tools, are composites. Hence the selection of AL uniformly (10dC =0.003)
Sim model with polyoxymethylene (POM) (or acetal, or TM as Delrin). It literally shatters my 0.01mm min requirement considering we add a +30% security buffer to designs, normally.

Trust me if I could have just use delrin (or any other composites) I wouldn't have given myself that trouble of making this 95% out of metal / 5% glass. Anything plastic in there just doesn't work :/

(Sim model based off OD25mmx8mm puck, copied the one from your OP above as example)
(10dC diff is the difference between a cold/hot spindle or morning/afternoon if you wish)

[maxspongebob]

Good to know. Thanks. One of these days I am going to have to break out the sim tools in Inventor.

[Mecanix]

Np! If you design then yea no cutting corners, need the materials' linear/non-linear validation before hitting CAD :/ Especially in a case of a probe... not going re-design this thing again LOL
I believe Inventor uses Nastran's equations also, not sure (aka far sufficient).

[RCaffin]

Yes, plastics have a significant thermal expansion, but it would be symmetric around the central axis. I don't see (yet) why a plastic centre should affect the accuracy much?

Cheers
Roger