[Matt G]

Thank you for this Geri! This has been driving me nuts too so I stopped using the pause function. My table is currently in a moving truck somewhere, so I’ll have to try this fix when I get it reassembled.

Did your sister submit a pull request to Rob?

[Matt G]

Hi naldo

I have the schematic for my PCB on easy eda, and here:

The simplest schematic would be the connections between the huzzah32 and the stepper drivers. You will need 5v to the huzzah (USB power works) and 12v to the steppers

[Matt G]

Hi Bram – unfortunately I haven’t had any time to work on the android app in recent months. Dealing with a 2 year old and potty training is taking up all my free time… it’s quite exhausting. It’s on my list when I can get around to it – but I’m not sure when that will be.

mDNS would be the correct approach – but I’m not sure how to implement that on the firmware side. It’s probably doable – but that will take even more time ha

[Matt G]

Thanks for the feedback! Once I’m back home and have some time I’ll get some of this stuff fixed. I had planned on disabling/enabling tabs based on connection status but completely forgot.
As for discovery, without modifying firmware I could attempt to grab status on every possible IP address until one succeeds.. this may take some time to scan but I’ll explore it

[Matt G]

No worries! I forgot any type of feedback for the save button once I actually got it working. I’ll add something there. Also I’ll see if the current file is available in the bot’s status. I can’t remember if it is or not. Thanks for the testing!

[Matt G]

Hi Bram.. just curious what phone you are using? And you are using the sd card on the bot, and not the built in memory?

The new version works fine on every device and emulator I have tested

I’m on holiday for 2 weeks, so I would suggest using the old one for now. If you can read up on how to record an Android logcat file and send it to me while running the app, that would be super helpful in determining what’s going on.

Maybe I’ll look into releasing this officially so I can get crash and log metrics through Google play, although I’m not sure official apps are able to use clear text network traffic like the sand bot does.

[Matt G]

V4: https://alwaystinkering.com/files/sandbot-debug-v4.apk
– Complete re-write (again) – use android architecture best practices
– Bottom Navigation
– Settings show current values
– Playlist creation and edit functionality
– Delete Pattern and Playlist functional

[Matt G]

I built mine out of 2×2 poplar in a “modern” style. Attached to the bottom with press nuts and m6 bolts. This is probably the best picture I have. The table doesn’t tip over in any direction – this has been well tested by my toddler.

[Matt G]

Hi Bram – That change shouldn’t be hard at all. I’m actually in the middle of a complete re-write of the app and have added playlist creation and edit functionality. I’m trying to get it in line with the standard Android app architecture model (https://developer.android.com/jetpack/guide) as right now it’s really a mashup of all kinds of approaches that just barely work together. My “free” time is hardly existent these days with a 2 year old, but I intend to at least get this version complete sometime “soon”.

The app is open source (see first post – I added a link) – so you should be able to clone it, and load it into android studio and play around with it if you want.

[Matt G]

If you are seeing that output – your serial monitor is working fine. That’s the output from the robot you’re seeing. So you now have the program running.

Now you need to configure it. Rob’s software post goes into this nicely – you’ll need to look here, about halfway down the page:

SandBot Software Revamp

Where it says “Getting on the Net”

Once on the net – you should be able to visit both the cncUI.html and sandUI.html page using the ip address. You will then need to configure the robot to use the SandTableScaraMatt configuration using the cncUI.html, assuming you are using my PCB. Most of these details should be available on the forum here and in the sandbot posts.

[Matt G]

V3: https://alwaystinkering.com/files/sandbot-debug-v3.apk
– Fixed storage status card

[Matt G]

Glad you got the compile issue figured out. I actually ran into that too recently when trying to compile again. Not sure if someone committed anything to Rob’s repo or not, but this change will also fix that compile issue:

in the file lib/RdUtils/Utils.h – change

    // Following code from Unix sources
    static const unsigned long INADDR_NONE = ((unsigned long)0xffffffff);

to

    // Following code from Unix sources
    #ifndef INADDR_NONE
    static const unsigned long INADDR_NONE = ((unsigned long)0xffffffff);
    #endif

As for the serial monitor – you need to set the serial monitor port in the platformio.ini to the same port you upload to. it’s commented out by default:

monitor_port = COM9

Change COM9 to the same com port as your board.

[Matt G]

I believe I used all m3 button head screws and nuts, so if you can find a kit with varying lengths. I did use nylocks as well, so I don’t think those are available in the hardware kits. Also the long screws to fasten the top and bottom plate together will have to be bought separately.

[Matt G]

You’ve gone through the initial troubleshooting I would have. Can you probe the driver pins and see if they are getting the correct signals?

[Matt G]

So it looks like the bigger gears are 60 tooth, and the motor drive gears are 20 tooth, so you’re looking at a 1:3 ratio. I’m super interested to see how accurate your machine turns out to be with metal and acrylic.

[Matt G]

I printed everything in PLA except the top arm. I printed that in PETG to give it some flex due to the sagging nature of a large sand area. I also printed everything in 100% infill if it made sense. My original build I didn’t do 100% and noticed some deforming after a while.

ABS would probably be even better, but I’ve never dialed ABS in on my printer to attempt it.

[Matt G]

To expand bliksem’s post. The subfolder in my github called “Original Parts” are the untouched parts from Rob’s original model that need to be printed in addition to the models in the root folder. Also included there are the top/base plates as STLs to print, rather than laser cut.

It also depends on what you want to build. There are several STLs in the folder that are specific to my actual furniture build.
– Furniture DC and USB panel
– PCB Support
– slim legs
– table spaces
– LED holder

are all specific to my build. You may or may not want/need them. All the other parts are essential to building the robot mechanism. The arms are 184.5mm in length to accommodate a ~36″ diameter table – so if you are looking to build that size, the arms will work for you. If you need something bigger or smaller, you will need to customize them using Fusion 360 and the SandTableDesignScara model.

This is not a one size fits all project. The blog post is more of a guide on customization of Rob’s original project. I customized all of the sensor mounting and belt tensioning of the main arm to what worked for me. Something different may work for someone else.

[Matt G]

Also. I think it only works on a desktop. I’m not sure how to “drag” on a mobile browser.

[Matt G]

Hi Geri

You can create a “playlist” by creating a sequence in the web interface. I haven’t incorporated sequence creation into the app yet.

You have to set a name, then drag the tracks you want in order into the sequence. You can repeat tracks as well. Then you can play the sequence and it will run all the tracks.

[Matt G]

I just converted them using Fusion 360 and posted them in the original parts section of my models github repo:

https://github.com/grammesm/Sandbot-Models/tree/master/Original%20Parts

[Matt G]

Yea good call on reminding me about the app not showing the storage correctly – I forgot about that issue.

The amount of sand you use depends on how “deep” you want the tracks to be.. I think I used 4-5 bags to get a nice even thickness across the whole table.

I wish I would have saved the old sisyphus dropbox before it went down. I got a lot of my tracks from there. I am not aware of anyone that has an archive. I also tried to get the default sisyphus tracks from the sisbot rpi image without any luck.

I posted lots of links to tracks in one of the comments on the main post, but here they are.

The sisysphus subreddit is a decent community, although it’s not very active. I’ve gotten some cool patterns from here
https://old.reddit.com/r/SisyphusIndustries/

markyland posts some good stuff.

This guy makes some of my favorite tracks. I love some of the crop circles, and hosta is great. StarryNight is very cool too – looks like the actual painting
https://github.com/ddkengr/Sisyphus-threads

This guy creates some nice ones – there are preview images
https://github.com/Dithermaster/sisyphus/tree/master/thr_paths

Another guy’s dropbox
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yd5a5v37c6bz2sd/AAD9m1W7lSUnSixx5ZjfZeWFa?dl=0

I also run some of these patterns
https://github.com/heropup/sisyphus

I like this guys’ spirals and run a few of them
http://thejuggler.net/sisyphus/

Sisyphus actually has a new community tracks section. I haven’t really browsed this yet, but should be a good source of thr files
https://sisyphus-industries.com/community/community-tracks/

There is also a sisyphus public dropbox somewhere that I used to go to .. I can’t seem to find the link anywhere although it’s referenced a lot on reddit and the sisyphus forums

This website apparently lets you make your own from an image. I’m not sure how well it works
https://sftrou.omarelamri.me/#/home

Sandify lets you create parametric patterns and export the thr files
https://sandify.org/

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Matt G.

[Matt G]

This is a tough one.. Normally I’d think it was some wifi setup issue, but if your ipad and laptop can both see the sand bot, then it’s gotta be an issue on the phone. I haven’t seen this before, but if this happened to me I would try some of the following…

– Is your phone IP address on the same subnet? I would assume so, but always worth checking the IP. Maybe compare it to the ipad and laptop and see if it’s some different range of IPs
– 2.4 vs 5Ghz bands – are both the devices on the same band? I believe the huzzah is 2.4 only, so try connecting your phone to the same band. (Not that this is needed – but would be worth it for troubleshooting)
– Are you running any private DNS on your android phone for ad blocking?
– Download a terminal emulator app and attempt to ping the sand bot

See if any of those lead to some lead at all…

[Matt G]

Hi Gee. The schematic for my build is available where my PCB is stored on easy eda.

https://easyeda.com/grammo/sand-table-feather-esp-huzzah32

That details all the wiring connections needed if you do not use the PCB.

[Matt G]

Just curious how you did it? I was going to suggest on the router side as I didn’t think the firmware supported static IP.

[Matt G]

I just pushed a new commit to the repo to update the app code to more recent versions of everything. Also added a way to actually configure the IP address of the robot.

Here is a link to a compiled apk: https://alwaystinkering.com/files/sandbot-debug-v1.apk

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