Category — General Commentary

I’ve been busy lately with a variety of tasks, including buying a car.  I’d enjoy car buying if I had a big budget and was looking at fun cars like a Mini Cooper S Convertible (my semi-practical dream car), but buying a used car for my wife is another matter.

But since it’s been too long since my last post, here are some quick notes:

• The next post on the Eagle PCB and Alibre series is in progress
• I recently picked up a Applicom DirectLink DRL-CNO-PCU CANOpen card.
  • Applicom is now part of Brad which is part of Molex.
  • Anyway, the DirectLink card is a PCI plug in card with a CAN connector (DB9F, first time I’ve seen that) and some sort of x86 processor.  The CANOpen stack is run on the DirectLink board; there’s no need to run a CANOpen stack on the PC side (e.g. CANFestival).
  • DirectLink cards are available for a variety of interfaces (e.g. DeviceNet, Profibus), and share a common API.  They’re meant to be used to interface fieldbuses with SCADA and soft PLC applications.
  • However, I noted that the CANOpen software does show support for DS402 (motion profile).
  • One nice plus is that the software will scan the network for CANOpen devices.  So if I have a CAN device with unknown ID and baud rate, I can just change the baud rate and then let the DirectLink card figure out the CANOpen ID.
  • I plan on writing more about this card, after I finish my current series.
• I managed to get over to Maido Stationery, and pick up some more JDM pens and a 0.3mm Kuro Toga pencil, so I’ll be doing another pen post soon.

I’ve added the Eagle PCB source files for six PCB projects, included the five boards I’ve discussed previously.

You can download via subversion or the new download page.  You can browse with trac.

I plan on experimenting a bit with the format of the download page.

And, yes, I am still working on the Eagle PCB/Alibre series; in fact, I created the download page to support my next post in that series.

Three years of blogging — and I’m still averaging about a post every week and a half.

I’ve been very busy in the first half of 2010 with family and work, so I haven’t been able to post as much as I would like.

I am working towards finishing a few posts on creating a PCB model in Alibre from Eagle PCB, but as normal it is taking longer than I hoped.

Once the Alibre/Eagle series is complete, I will be doing a practical motion control series.

Silicon Valley is filled with stores; I’d say retail is still overbuilt, despite some store closings.  But recently, I had a lot of trouble finding some definitely non-exotic items.

First, I went looking for a 4″ Crescent wrench.  I looked at four stores, including Lowe’s and Orchard; the results weren’t pretty.

I bought a 4″ Craftsman wrench at Orchard about a decade ago, but now Orchard has nothing.  At least Orchard has some good hand tools, such as Bondhus hex wrenches.

I wasn’t impressed with Lowe’s hand tools; about half seemed to be private labeled made in China specials.  They didn’t have any 4″ Crescent wrenches.

Fry’s actually has some nice hand tools, although their selection was better a few years ago.  For example, I bought some really sweet Wiha screwdrivers there, but they don’t sell those now.  And they don’t sell 4″ wrenches.

I finally went to the local Ace hardware store, and found a sweet little 4″ Crescent wrench (made by Crescent).  It wasn’t cheap, but the quality is excellent, and I expect it to last a decade or two.

The second item I wanted was a pen (Sakura Jelly Roll) someone gave us; I really like the way it writes.  So I looked at the Office Depot, Staples, and Target, didn’t find it, gave up, and then found the Sakura web site.  Apparently, their pens are only sold by specialist stores (e.g. art and technical drawing stores).  Sometime I’ll make a trip to one of those stores; they have some really cool sounding products, including pigment ink pens and embossing pens.

My blog plans for 2010 are my blog hopes for 2010 because it will  be challenging to do them all.

What I’d really like to do:

1. More software development posts, including real world examples of what can go wrong (and right — but wrong is more funny)
2. Finish my current PCB series
3. Start a series on real world system integration using CANOpen and AMC DX15C08 servo drives
4. Improve the site, including adding a blogroll and maybe changing the theme

Other hopes include:

1. A bit more on mechanical CAD software
2. More automation product posts
3. Embedded development experiences with my new toy (and how it could be useful in a factory environment)
4. Get rid of my backlog of draft posts (currently > 30)

For my Factory Software Blog projects, the winner is Mouser.

It’s easy for me to order from catalog distributors like Mouser and Digikey, and with their wide range of products, I can get almost everything I need from either one, which is convenient and saves on shipping.  Both have excellent search engines that really help pinpoint the products I need.

Mouser’s result pages are prettier than Digikey’s, but that’s not all.  Mouser shows volume pricing on the result page, allow you to sort by price, and allow you to continue to filter even with less than one page of results.  Typically Mouser is a bit cheaper than Digikey (though not always).

The real reason I’ve done all my Factory Software Blog ordering from Mouser is that that I’ve been choosing a lot of Phoenix Contact Combicon PCB connectors for various interface PCB boards, and Mouser stocks a much wider variety of Combicon components than Digikey.  Digikey won’t sell many Combicon parts in single quantities: you have to buy the whole pack (e.g. 10 parts or 50 parts).   Ugh!

Newark also has a good range of parts but is often pricier than Mouser (although I’ve heard that prices can be negotiated).  Allied Electronics has a better selection of industrial products (such as pneumatics).  But the big problem with both: their search engines are terrible.

One reader puts in a good word for Premier Farnell’s new social forum site.  It might be great, along with other such forums (e.g. TI E2E, ADI’s new one, CNCZone, Control Engineering’s LinkedIn and Facebook groups, etc), but I’m not interested in forums right now.  Been there, done that.

The jumbo distributors like Arrow and Avnet do have the widest range of electronics, but aren’t as friendly to individuals.  Neither are local automation distributors (although I’ve bought a couple items from them), but they typically do have better prices and service than the catalog distributors.  So I use them a lot at work, but they’re too much of a hassle for my Factory Software Blog projects.

It’s not worth it.

Based on my traffic, adding advertising would just about cover my hosting costs, which aren’t a big expense anyway.  But advertising would add a lot of annoying distractions.  The only thing I might eventually add is a referral link for my hosting company, Webfaction, since I’ve been very happy with them.

My big expense is the hardware and software I buy, play with, and then write about here. I’ve spent a lot more on CANOpen servo drives, CAN interfaces, Alibre Design, VX Innovator, connectors, breakout boards, and PCBs than I have spent on hosting.

I have not received any money or gifts for this blog, and will not accept any money.  There are some sample products that I’ve received for free (actually, work related, not blog related freebies) that I will write about, but I will make it clear when the product was a free sample, not something I bought.

One of my biggest costs is the time I spend here: each blog post does take a substantial amount of time to write, typically much more than I expect.  My drafts have an annoying way of expanding.   I don’t plan on taking quitting, but since blogging comes after family and work, at times new posts might take a while to appear.

Premier Farnell, a major electronics distributor (subsidiaries include Newark and Farnell), has purchased Cadsoft Computer, developer of Eagle PCB.

If you’re interested in the financial details, go to the press release.   Since I use Eagle as my primary PCB design program, I’m interested in what might happen to Eagle.

Companies in another business that buy a company for “synergy” often destroy the business; examples include Exxon buying Zilog.  It looks like Premier Farnell is buying Cadsoft to increase their business, by increasing the integration between Eagle PCB and their distributor companies (e.g. so it’s very easy to specify and order parts from Newark in an Eagle design), similar to what Sunstone, Digikey, and NXP are doing with PCB123.

I am curious to see what changes the new owners will make.  Will they continue to invest in Eagle PCB to make it better?  Will they change the current pricing?

By default, the middle button on my Thinkpad’s  Trackpoint is set to a proprietary scroll mode.  This proprietary scroll mode doesn’t work in many applications (although sometimes changing config files can fix that), but the real problem is that I need the Trackpoint to act like a three button mouse.

For example, in CoCreate PE, I need all three buttons to easily manipulate the model: Ctrl+Right mouse button pans, Ctrl+Left zooms, and Ctrl+Middle rotates.

At least in Windows Vista, the Trackpoint configuration page  is not a model of clarity, but after some googling and playing around, I’ve found two configurations that make the  center Trackpoint button work like the middle button of a 3-button mouse.

The TrackPoint setup is a page on the Mouse Control Panel applet.

Trackpoint Setup

The first configuration is to select Neither for the Choose Scrolling or Magnifying Glass Functions.  Then the middle Trackpoint button works like a middle mouse button, but there is no extra scroll mode.

The second configuration is to select Scrolling for the Choose Scrolling or Magnifying Glass Functions, then press the Settings button, and select Smooth for the Scrollling Type. This is my favorite, since I can use the center button  both as a third button, and also to scroll horizontally and vertically.

Center Button settings

I’ve just passed the two year point (and 75 posts) on this blog, still averaging about a post every ten days.

My plan for the immediate future is for more on CANOpen and PCBs, partly because that is what I am working on for other projects.  I may also add some embedded adventures, which isn’t directly related to factory automation, but I’ve always been interested in embedded computing — and embedded computing is the foundation of industrial automation.

I haven’t forgotten about other areas; I will still write about other topics such as using version control.

I do need to spend some time upgrading the site itself – but I have no plans for adding advertisements.  They wouldn’t bring in enough money to be worth the hassle (web hosting is an incredible deal – I’m paying less than $8/month).

I am still thankful for all the useful information I’ve found at other blogs, and I hope I’ve helped some people out with this blog.