3D Printer Recognizes Third-Party Build Plates, Just Make Your Own ID Codes

July 19, 2023 by Donald Papp 14 Comments

The Bambu X1C 3D printer is a machine known for its speed, and it has a number of useful features like automatic build platform recognition. Factory build platforms are marked with an identifier code, and thanks to [elumspe] it’s now possible to make your own identifiers to stick onto third-party platforms and have the printer recognize them as though they were factory offerings. There’s even a super handy 3D-printable alignment tool that ensures the identifier goes in the correct spot, which is a nice touch.

These codes aren’t DRM so much as they are used by the printer to automatically verify that the installed build plate matches the slicer settings before a job begins. Printing one and sticking it in the right place is an easy way to get third-party plates recognized the same as factory offerings.

The identifier codes aren’t DRM so much as they are a way for the printer to verify that the installed build platform matches the slicer settings before a print begins, and throw up a warning if it doesn’t. The printer is perfectly happy to use third-party build surfaces, but since they lack an identifier, the printer will throw a warning each time. One solution is to simply disable checking the build platform before a print, but for those who would prefer to have the printer see what it expects to see, printing a small 2D barcode to stick on is an easy way to do it.

We see these sometimes called QR codes, but they look more like AprilTags. Both are types of 2D barcode, but while QR codes can encode a variety of information types, AprilTags are simpler and usually represent identifiers. In this case, they’re an appropriate way to let a camera-enabled printer know what kind of build plate is installed.

AprilTags are common in computer vision applications, and even relatively modest hardware can detect and decode them almost in real time. AprilTags are convenient and easy to use, as this gate access system demonstrates.

The OpenMV board inside a security camera shell on the left, an AprilTag on smartphone's screen on the right

Use AprilTags To Let Guests Open Your Front Gate

July 8, 2022 by Arya Voronova 18 Comments

[Herb Peyerl] is part of a robotics team, and in his robotics endeavours, learned about AprilTags; small QR-code-like printable patterns that are easily recognizable by even primitive machine vision. Later on, when thinking about good ways to let his guests through his property’s front gate, the AprilTags turned out to be a wonderful solution. Now all he needs to do is send his guest a picture of the appropriate AprilTag, which they can present to the camera at his front gate using their smartphone.

He used an OpenMV board for this – thanks to its wide variety of available libraries, the AprilTag recognition is already baked in, and the entire script is merely a hundred lines of MicroPython. An old surveillance camera gave up its dome-shaped housing, and now the OpenMV board is doing guest access duty on a post in front of his property’s front gate. He’s shared the code with us, and says he’s personally running a slightly modified version for security reasons — not that a random burglar is likely to stumble upon this post anyway. Besides it looks like the gate would be easy for a burglar to jump over without any need for security bypass, and the convenience benefits of this hack are undeniable.

In the unlikely chance a burglar is reading this, however, don’t be sad. We do happen to have a bunch of hacks for you, too. There’s far less secure systems out there, from building RFID keyfobs to gated community access control systems, sometimes all you need is a 12 V battery. If you’re not into burglary, that’s okay too — we’ve covered other guest access hacks before, for instance, this ESP8266-powered one.

This Machine-Vision Ekranoplan Might Just Follow You Home

April 29, 2022 by Dan Maloney 9 Comments

What is it that’s not quite either a plane or a boat, but has characteristics of both? There are probably a lot of things that fit that description, but the one that [Nick Rehm] is working on is known as an ekranoplan. Specifically, he’s looking to make the surface-skimming ground-effect vehicle operate autonomously.

If you think you’ve heard about ekranoplans around here before, you’d be right — we’ve covered a cool LIDAR-controlled model ekranoplan that [rctestflight] worked on about a year ago, and more recently, [ThinkFlight]’s attempts to make an autonomous ekranoplan that can follow behind a boat. The latter is where [Nick] enters the collaboration, and the featherweight foam ground-effect vehicle shown in the video below is his test platform.

After sorting out the basic airframe design and getting the LIDAR integrated, he turned his attention to the autonomous bit, which relies on a Raspberry Pi 4 running ROS and a camera with a wide-angle lens. The Pi uses machine vision algorithms to find an “AprilTag” fiducial marker in the scene, which gives the flight controller information about the relative orientation of the ekranoplan to the tag. [Nick] tested tag tracking using an electric longboard, and the model ekranoplan did an admirable job of not only managing the ground-effect, but also staying on target right behind him. And hats off to [Nick] for keeping all the balls in the air and not breaking his neck in the process.

We’re looking forward to seeing what [Nick] built here end up in [ThinkFlight]’s big ekranoplan build. Ground-effect vehicles like these are undeniably cool, and it seems like they’ve got the potential to solve some interesting transportation problems.

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