LaosLaser visits Fac Lab
Bart Bakker (minifablab.nl) and Jaap Vermaas wil be present at the opening of Fac Lab. FacLab is a new Fab Lab opening at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise in Gennevilliers (near Paris, France). We will join the roundtable about the future of Fab Labs and present our open source laser alternative.
laos hacking day
Today we (Peter, Bart, Harmen, Diana and me) did a reality check on the
laos firmware with menu support. Using the two HPC lasers from the Mini
FabLab and FabLab Amersfoort, we solved a large number of small bugs.
Hacking at the minifablab 18 feb 2012
LaOS Laser at school!
The LaOS laser project had it's first serious usability test: FabLab Amersfoort traveled with a LaOS laser to the Eemlandcollege, a gymnasium in Amersfoort. The laser was used to demonstrate of the possibilities of the FabLab to a group of 18 pupils.
Two new lasers running on LAOS
Today the Laser of minifablab and the laser of Fablab Amersfoort have the LAOS hardware implemented and can cut nice round circles!
New boards, and new lasers!
Bart just collected 4 new machines at HPC laser, which will be running LAOS soon. A new batch of PCB's has arrived, so we have 20 in stock for beta-testers!
More lasers!
Thomas working on his Laos Laser
We are proud to mention that more lasers are coming on-line with "Laos inside". Thomas Oster, from RWTH Aachen is working on an alternative workflow using his VisiCut software. This stand-alone Java program is now able to directly control a Laos Laser! See the wiki for more information.
LAOS laser @ CCC camp
We are at the CCC camp. Our open source laser prototype can be seen in the hardware hacking tent. Every day about 13:00 we do a presentation about our project.
The PCB's for the LAOS laser are available at the camp as well. The sheets of the presentation are found here (note: 9 MByte PDF).
Update: most PCB's are sold or awarded to supporters of the project. We hope to see some converted systems soon!
I2C panel available
We finished the first version of a dashboard for laser operation. It's based on a 2x16 digits LCD and a 12 button keyboard. It connects to our mainboard using the I2C protocol.
The panel uses an Arduino as a brain. It's very easy to change. We hope other open hardware projects can benefit from this design as well!
More information on the I2C panel wiki page
There is progress…
We have been a bit low key (other activities) but progress is made. We are routing a PCB, and working on the firmware. The SUDA system is now at Jaap's place, to run with new hard and software. Homing is working, speed settings are possible. Ubuntu 11.04 gave some compilation and linking problems, stepping back to Debian helped. We expect some releases in the next weeks.