A while ago I built a Modbus RTU to Modbus TCP Gateway based on a Beaglebone Green and a RS485 Cape (check my blog posts [1] from back then). It worked, but stoped working from time to time and I decided to fix that issue a few weeks ago. I …
I always wanted to have some custom icons for my Home-Assistant setup. Unfortunately, if you set a SVG directly via URL (/local/myicon.svg) it does not change color depending on its state. On the other hand, if you set an MDI icon, the color...
I own a Hörmann sectional door to my garage which is driven by a Hörmann SupraMatic E. To control the door via a home automation system you have several options: Connect potential free contacts directly to the motor. That means you have just very...
Our fire brigade wants to use a software that gives them details about their fire run. Unfortunately the softare is Windows only and runs on a vserver in the server room. Two displays will be mounted in the hall where the fire trucks are as well...
After a long period of silence I finally found the time to migrate my blog from Octopress to Pelican. I really liked Octopress for a while but I always struggled to modify it in the way I wanted to mainly because it is written in Ruby, which I...
In my last post I've explained how I got RS485 working on a BeagleBone Green. Since then I managed to build a Modbus TCP to Modbus RTU gateway based on that and want to show how it works. First of all I try to expalin the basics because I found …
I want to build a Modbus TCP to Modbus RTU gateway using a BeagleBoneGreen and a WaveShare RS485 CAN CAPE. Unfortunately the documentation on the Waveshare Cape is really bad, so I will try to document here what steps were necessary to get the...
I started playing around with the images i've scanned and with a little GIMP magic i was able to create a useful overlay image. As you can see, the quality is not perfect, but still good enough to be very helpful in the reverse engineering...
And here we go with part 2 of my DQ860MA reverse engineering project! After i listed all parts, i desoldered them and cleaned the PCB very well. Then i scanned the PCB from both sides to get a clear image of all the traces. In the next step i will …
As announced in one of my last posts i will try to reverse engineer the DQ860MA. Unfortunately i realized that the PCB is a 4 layer PCB, which makes it way harder to get a schematic. So as a start i will get a list of all components. part name …
I use clonezilla a lot to load images onto computers or create backups of them and it was always a hassle to enter the same values into the diolog over and over again. Unfortunately the documentation is not the very best. Anyway, with a lot of...
I've bought 4 large stepper motors and 4 DQ860MA drivers on ebay a few days ago. Unfortunately one was faulty from the beginning. The seller sent me a new one winthin 2 days which is awesome, but the best part is that i hadn't to return the...
I posted a video on Youtube showing how I connected a Smoothieboard wired to a Yaskawa Sigma 2 AC-Servodriver with a 400W Servomotor. Afterwards I got asked to show more details and that's why I write this blog post. First of all, here's the...
I had two identical computers of which one had a damaged Windows 7 installation that refused to boot. The other was a spare machine for that case, but unfortunately it wasn't updated for about 2 years. So I had to install about 200 Updates which...
Last week i tried to read and write data to and from a SICK FlexiSoft Safty controller which has a Modbus/TCP gateway. Because i had a lot of trouble to get that up and running i decided to write a few lines about i managed to solve my problems …
My MateDealer project was entirely written in C because the Arduino IDE or more detailed the HardwareSerial part lacks the 9-bit support. It is easy to send a 8 bit data frame, but nearly impossible to do that with 9 bit frames. I worked for a...
I've recently bought a few SparkFun ProMicro 5V 16Mhz clones from Ebay because they are extremely cheap (7 Euro each) and habe native USB. The only problem i had is that i was not able to program them using inotool. The upload issue To get them...
I've tried to generate the locales on my Raspberry Pi, but i ran into a problem that i was not able to solve for a few hours. root@rpi: ~$ locale-gen Generating locales... en_US.UTF-8.../usr/bin/locale-gen: line 41: 303 Killed localedef -i $input...
I've worked with the Java based Arduino IDE for a long time now, and always thought that i miss the comfort of vim. But for soom reason i never searched for an alternative, but yesterday i had enough of that shit piece of software! Ino So i...
I use Flask and Flask-SQLAlchemy for a while now. Doing so i spent a lot of time in searching for the solutions for different problems. See this as my notebook of helpfull snippets. I will update this post from time to time because i don't want...
I work on a project that has a form including a map, so a logged in user can enter his data and drawing features on the map and save it afterwards. The user gets a page that shows the map with the features on it. I will show how to …
Because i've got a lot of emails during the last year with several questions about my MDB projects, i try to answer them here. The MateDealer, what is it exactly? I've called my main MDB project MateDealer because my vending machine primary vends...
Making web uploads less painfull For one of my current Flask projects i want to have a nice looking and easy to use file upload form. That means no input type="file" form field where i have to select each file and the upload it on at a time. I …
I finally activated the Disqus comment system for my blog. I wanted to do this for a while now but was to lazy to do it :-)
I do a few webprojects with Flask and I love it! While creating a template i searched for a way to call functions from within the template, and found out that i can use a @app.context_processor decorator. @app.context_processor def...
The problem I have built a PCB drill that works nice most of the time, but sometimes it occurs that the stepper motor don't perform a full turn. This is caused by the friction of the eccentric tappet. I've simply made it out of a piece of steel...
I just want to announce that i've published my MDB cashless device code for the MateDealer project on github. It would be nice to get some feedback! Here is the github repo: MateDealer@github
Last Tuesday I’ve nearly finished the complete code for the MateDealer project. After I’ve successfully vended a Club Mate (that is the drink the MateDealer got it’s name from) I loged the MDB communication with my logic analyzer. I have taken a...
Today I want to show you how I connected our vending machine to the Arduino Mega 2560. With a piece of stripboard i made a board that can be stacked on an Arduino like a real shield. As you can see the board is really simple. It contain just 2 …
Today I want to present you a little bit Arduino code because i've searched a lot for a working telnet server to control I/O's over network. The code is based on the "Examples - Ethernet - ChatServer". So here is my version of the server:...
I've built a PCB drill that drills the holes from below through the PCB. Taking aim on to the solder pads will be done with a webcam. The start of a cycle is triggered with the help of a foot pedal, so that both hands can be used to fix …
I've found a nice video from a member of das-labor Hackerspace in which he shows his laser exposer for photoreactive PCB's A very nice way to make the PCB development more easy. The video is sadly commented in german but the wiki page is...
In 2010 I've bought a vending machine for our hackerspace. After we used it for a while with the built-in coin changer device, we noted that we need another way to pay the drinks. So i decided to build a not yet defined type of cashless payment...
The laser unit A few days ago, i opened a broken laser printer to get its laser unit. The printer was a Brother HL2030. I totally forgot to take pictures of the disassembling. The picture shows the laser unit with already dismounted top cover,...
The first test Today i've made the first attempt to create a PCB with the press-n-peel foil. This is the printed press-n-peel foil: The foil pressed on the PCB: And the lousy result after peeling the foil off: As you can see the major part of the...
The reason behind Yesterday i got my ordered press-n-peel foils! The reason why i want to try press-n-peel foil is that i want to do my PCBs in our hackerspace with as less steps and costs as possible. I've tried the toner transfer method a few...
Hello and welcome to my newly setup blog! I try to post technical post in english to give a wider audiance a chance to benefit of them, but there will be german posts from time to time. Thats it for now.