If you have used a 3D printer for any length of time, you’ve probably experienced a failed print caused by a clogged nozzle. If you’re not around to stop the print and the nozzle stays hot and full of filament for hours, the clog gets even worse. [Florian] set out to solve this issue with an encoder that measures filament speed, which acts as an early warning system for nozzle clogs.

[Florian] designed a small assembly with a wheel and encoder that measures filament movement. The filament passes under the encoder wheel before it’s fed into the 3D printer. The encoder is hooked up to an Arduino which measures the Gray code pulses as the encoder rotates, and the encoder count is streamed over the serial port to a computer.

When the filament slows down or stops due to a nozzle clog, the Python script plays a notification sound to let you know that you should check your nozzle and that your print might fail. Once [Florian] works out some of the kinks in his setup, it would be awesome if the script could stop the print when the nozzle fails. Have any other ideas on how to detect print failures? Let us know in the comments.

Announced over a year ago now during Maker Faire, the Arduino Zero is now finally available for purchase in the United States.

Read more on MAKE

The post The Arduino Zero is Now Shipping in the US appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

Announced over a year ago now during Maker Faire, the Arduino Zero is now finally available for purchase in the United States.

Read more on MAKE

The post The Arduino Zero is Now Shipping in the US appeared first on Make:.

One year ago Arduino and Atmel unveiled the new Arduino Zero. Today, after some months of beta-testing, we are happy to have the board finally available for purchase on the US Store.

Arduino Zero is a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the well-known Arduino UNO. It allows creative individuals to realize truly innovative ideas especially in areas like smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, and robotics. Arduino Zero acts also as a great educational tool for learning 32-bit application development.

Powered by Atmel SAMD21 MCU, Arduino Zero features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core. One of its “most wanted” features is the Atmel Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware.

Arduino Zero’s silk has an additional graphic element: the Genuino logo. Genuino is the Arduino sister brand from the Arduino founders (M. Banzi, D. Cuartielles, T. Igoe, D. Mellis), team and community. We added the Genuino logo to the Arduino Zero to stress its authenticity, and to make it easier for the Arduino community to spot original boards. We are going to include this logo to all genuine Arduino boards from now on.

To start using the board you need to download the latest version of the IDE (1.6.5), which comes with a set of great improvements:

• a new modern editor (thanks @ricardojlrufino)
• serial monitor stays open while you upload a new sketch (thanks @avishorp and @Wackerbarth)
• File > Open Recent menu shows the last 5 opened sketches
• Tons of fixes and improvements: the list is available here. They are 470 issues closed since previous version, 1.6.4: massive!

Learn more about the Arduino Zero and get started with it at the following links:

– Updated Arduino Zero product page

– Getting Started Page

– Github repository

– Interact in the Arduino Forum

And if you are one of the lucky ones and have Arduino Zero in your hands, start practicing its features with the following tutorials:

- Arduino Zero Low Power Overview

It shows the low power characteristics of the Arduino Zero thanks to a low power microcontroller using the 32 bit ARM Cortex M0+ architecture.

– Simple Audio Feature

It shows how to experiment with sound starting to play a wave file stored on the SD card.

One year ago Arduino and Atmel unveiled the new Arduino Zero. Today, after some months of beta-testing, we are happy to have the board finally available for purchase on the US Store.

Arduino Zero is a simple and powerful 32-bit extension of the well-known Arduino UNO. It allows creative individuals to realize truly innovative ideas especially in areas like smart IoT devices, wearable technology, high-tech automation, and robotics. Arduino Zero acts also as a great educational tool for learning 32-bit application development.

Powered by Atmel SAMD21 MCU, Arduino Zero features a 32-bit ARM Cortex® M0+ core. One of its “most wanted” features is the Atmel Embedded Debugger (EDBG), which provides a full debug interface without the need for additional hardware.

Arduino Zero’s silk has an additional graphic element: the Genuino logo. Genuino is the Arduino sister brand from the Arduino founders (M. Banzi, D. Cuartielles, T. Igoe, D. Mellis), team and community. We added the Genuino logo to the Arduino Zero to stress its authenticity, and to make it easier for the Arduino community to spot original boards. We are going to include this logo to all genuine Arduino boards from now on.

To start using the board you need to download the latest version of the IDE (1.6.5), which comes with a set of great improvements:

• a new modern editor (thanks @ricardojlrufino)
• serial monitor stays open while you upload a new sketch (thanks @avishorp and @Wackerbarth)
• File > Open Recent menu shows the last 5 opened sketches
• Tons of fixes and improvements: the list is available here. They are 470 issues closed since previous version, 1.6.4: massive!

Learn more about the Arduino Zero and get started with it at the following links:

– Updated Arduino Zero product page

– Getting Started Page

– Github repository

– Interact in the Arduino Forum

And if you are one of the lucky ones and have Arduino Zero in your hands, start practicing its features with the following tutorials:

- Arduino Zero Low Power Overview

It shows the low power characteristics of the Arduino Zero thanks to a low power microcontroller using the 32 bit ARM Cortex M0+ architecture.

– Simple Audio Feature

It shows how to experiment with sound starting to play a wave file stored on the SD card.

If you’ve been keeping up with the hobbyist FPGA community, you’ll recognize the DE0 Nano as “that small form-factor FPGA” with a deep history of projects from Oldland cpu cores to synthesizable Parallax Propeller processors. After more than four years in the field though, it’s about time for a reboot.

Its successor, the DE0 Nano SoC, is a complete redesign from multiples perspectives while doing it’s best to preserve the bite-size form factor and price that made the first model so appealing. First, the dev board boasts a Cyclone V with 40,000 logical elements (up from the DE0’s 22K) and an integrated dual-core Arm Cortex A9 Processor. The PCB layout also brings us  3.3V Arduino shield compatibility via female headers, 1 Gig of external DDR3 SDRAM and gigabit ethernet support via two onboard ASICs to handle the protocol. The folks at Terasic also seem to be tipping their hats towards the “Duino-Pi” hobbyist community, given that they’ve kindly provided both Linux and Arduino images to get you started a few steps above your classic finite-state machines and everyday combinational logic.

And while the new SoC model sports a slightly larger form factor at 68.59mm x 96mm (as opposed to the original’s 49mm x 75.2mm), we’d say it’s a small price to pay in footprint for a whirlwind of new possibilities on the logic level. The board hits online shelves now at a respectable $100.

Next, as a heads-up, the aforementioned Arduino Zero finally makes it’s release on June 15. If you’ve ever considered taking the leap from an 8-bit to a 32-bit processor without having to hassle through the setup of an ARM toolchain, now might be a great time to get started.

via [the Arduino Blog]

Now that summer is coming, it’s time to break out the Air Conditioners! There are some old AC units out there that still work just fine, but nowadays we are used to everything being remotely controlled and automatic. [Phil] had an old window-mounted AC unit that still worked but was installed in a not-so-convenient place. To access the AC’s controls, one would have to climb over a large desk. This is a perfect opportunity to use the plethora of widely available hobby electronics to make an automatic AC controller retrofit.

First things first, there needs to be a way to turn the current control knob on the AC. [Phil] modeled up a 3D bracket to hold an RC car servo to the AC control panel. Attached to the servo horn is a slotted cylinder sized appropriately to fit the shape of the control knob. An Arduino measures the temperature of the room via a DS18B20 temperature sensor which then has the servo turn the control knob to the appropriate position, on or off. The Arduino sends temperature data back to a PC via MegunoLink Pro which graphs past data and also displays current temperature data. Using MegunoLink Pro, the min/max temperature points can also be set without uploading a new sketch to the Arduino.

From the temp vs time graph, it looks like the room temperature stays a consistent 23 +/- 1 °C. [Phil] did us summer-swelterers a favor and made all his design files available. This is a great idea but wonder if leaving the air conditioner unit switch in the ‘on’ position and turning the unit on/off via a relay connected to the 120vac line would work just as well.

When most people think of 3D printing, they think of Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) printers. These work by heating a material, squirting it out a nozzle that moves around, and letting it cool. By moving the nozzle around in the right patterns while extruding material out the end, you get a part. You’ve probably seen one of the many, many, many FDM printers out there.

Stereolithography printing (SLA) is a different technique which uses UV light to harden a liquid resin. The Chimera printer uses this technique, and aims to do it on the cheap by using recycled parts.

First up is the UV light source. DLP projectors kick out a good amount of UV, and accept standard video inputs. The Mitsubishi XD221u can be had for about $50 off eBay. Some modifications are needed to get the focus distance set correctly, but with that complete the X and Y axes are taken care of.

For the Z axis, the build platform needs to move. This was accomplished with a stepper motor salvaged from a disk drive. An Arduino drives the motor to ensure it moves at the right rate.

Creation Workshop was chosen as the software to control the Chimera. It generates the images for the projector, and controls the Z axis. The SLA process allows for high definition printing, and the results are rather impressive for such a cheap device. This is something we were just talking about yesterday; how to lower the cost of 3D printers. Obviously this is cheating a bit because it’s banking on the availability of cheap used parts. But look at it this way: it’s based on older technology produced at scale which should help a lot with the cost of sourcing this stuff new. What do you think?

We’ve been waiting for this moment for months and today we confirm that Arduino Zero will be available for purchase from the Arduino Store in US on Monday June 15th at  $49.90.

At the same time we are going to release Arduino IDE 1.6.5 with a bunch of new features and the support for the Arduino Zero. The new IDE keeps the serial monitor open while uploading, lists the last 5 opened sketches in the “Open Recent” menu, and many other features you’ll discover next week.

Our team stumbled upon a last minute software bug which moved the launch date by a bit  but everything is almost ready, they really worked hard to ensure the best experience of use.

We love this product as it shows our great collaboration with Atmel, and we know a lot of people in the Arduino community are looking forward to put their hands on it.

Stay tuned!

We’ve been waiting for this moment for months and today we confirm that Arduino Zero will be available for purchase from the Arduino Store in US on Monday June 15th at  $49.90.

At the same time we are going to release Arduino IDE 1.6.5 with a bunch of new features and the support for the Arduino Zero. The new IDE keeps the serial monitor open while uploading, lists the last 5 opened sketches in the “Open Recent” menu, and many other features you’ll discover next week.

Our team stumbled upon a last minute software bug which moved the launch date by a bit  but everything is almost ready, they really worked hard to ensure the best experience of use.

We love this product as it shows our great collaboration with Atmel, and we know a lot of people in the Arduino community are looking forward to put their hands on it.

Stay tuned!