3D Printing: TFM Group Software partners FabLab in production of Protective Face Shields for doctors

Starting today 21 March 2020 TFM Group Software joins FabLab initiative to produce and distribute Protective Face Shields for doctors that are fighting covid-19.

Idea is simple: we need to protect our doctors as best as we can. And Protective Face Shields can help.

Model to be produced is: https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/25857-prusa-protective-face-shield-rc2 . Thanks to Prusa Research for designing this model.

We at TFM will start to put out our 3D Printers to produce as much face shield parts as we can. Parts will be delivered to FabLab for final assembly and delivery.

Technical details:

We will put to work our new finished 3d printer ( HCube CM3D ) and our lab printer ( Prusa mks3 ) that we used for prototyping other projects we had.

HCube Printer
Prusa Mk3s printing face shield parts

HCube is a HyperCube printer that was adapted to be as stable as possible. Built with 20×40 v-slot profiles, e3dv5 hotend and linear rails on all axis. By far it’s the most stable 3d printer we built so far. And printing this shields will be a stress test for it. We will try to print with it 24 / 7 for as long as parts will be needed. We wanted to improve it a lot more ( and trying to produce it with Romania produced parts ) before we announce it, but given the situation we are putting it to work as it is.

Running octoprint on raspberry pi 4 model b. Part 1

For some time we have a Tevo Tarantula 3d printer. Usually we keep it connected to a desktop computer and while we were printing we didn’t do much on it. However last night while printing a piece that took a long time to print we decided that we should use the computer. Big mistake. Computer hanged ( We assume something related to video card but that remains to be tested), printer hanged so we have to print that piece again.

You can imagine the frustration. Luckily we have several raspberry pi 4 around ( for a Kubernetes cluster project ) and we decided to take one and build a print server.

All good . There is a good tutorial here: https://howchoo.com/g/y2rhnzm3odz/control-your-3d-printer-with-octoprint-and-raspberry-pi

However this tutorial is for Rpi 3 . Rpi 4 is a different kind of beast. First octoprint normal image ( at this point in time ) does not work with Rpi 4 . You need to flash the night build image from here: https://storage.googleapis.com/octoprint/2019-06-24_2019-06-20-octopi-buster-lite-0.17.0.zip

Second rpi4 has wireless . So you need to edit from the start octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt and setup SID and wifi pass .

We managed to do that after 3 flashed of the SD card (due to the fact that we were flashing the wrong image). Now comes the configuration part. But that will be in another post.

How to reset ILO controller from linux (without loosing config)

If you ever need to reset ILO controller from linux CLI ( without loosing the configs ) you can use the following trick:

Create an xml file (reset.xml) on server containing:

<RIBCL VERSION="2.0">
<LOGIN USER_LOGIN="admin" PASSWORD="something">
<RIB_INFO MODE="write">
<RESET_RIB/>
</RIB_INFO>
</LOGIN>
</RIBCL>

and then issue the following command:


hponcfg -f reset.xml

You will see a message like this :

root@pveg7:~# hponcfg -f reset.xml
HP Lights-Out Online Configuration utility
Version 4.2.0 Date 6/10/2013 (c) Hewlett-Packard Company, 2013
Firmware Revision = 1.87 Device type = iLO 3 Driver name = hpilo
Integrated Lights-Out will reset at the end of the script.

Please wait while the firmware is reset. This might take a minute
Script succeeded

 

At this point controller should be up again. Hope it helps.

Unifi controller in ubuntu 18.04 fix

To my disappointment Unifi Controller install on Ubuntu 18.04 fails big time. Their packages … Error message is somehow cryptic enough :

[2018-06-22 16:18:14,046]  INFO  db     - waiting for db connection...
[2018-06-22 16:18:14,546]  INFO  db     - Connecting to mongodb://127.0.0.1:27117
[2018-06-22 16:18:15,164]  ERROR system - [exec] error, rc=2
[2018-06-22 16:18:15,164]  INFO  db     - DbServer stopped
[2018-06-22 16:18:19,209]  ERROR system - [exec] error, rc=2
[2018-06-22 16:18:19,211]  INFO  db     - DbServer stopped
[2018-06-22 16:18:23,247]  ERROR system - [exec] error, rc=2

However i needed Unifi controller in order to control / setup an UniFi AP-AC-Pro ( we have one testing for one of our clients ). After some searching and tweaking around here how we fixed it:

cd /usr/bin
sudo mv mongod mongod.bin

And replace mongod with:

#!/bin/bash
cleaned_args=$(echo $* | sed -e 's/--nohttpinterface//')
exec /usr/bin/mongod.bin ${cleaned_args}

then

chmod +x mongod

Restart unifi service and point your browser to: http://localhost:8843/ and enjoy.

TFM IOT – Home automation. Part 1 . Introduction

A project with simple requirements is beautiful . However simple requirements might turn into hard to achieve implementations . This is the case in this home automation project.
Requirement for this project is simple … automate everything
in the house:

  • Lights
  • Shades
  • Music and video
  • Heating / ventilation
  • Air quality
  • Security

What exactly we are trying to achieve :

  • Control any device in the house remotely
  • Monitor and graph all sensors
  • Take action if events are happening in t
    he house
  • Have a secure, simple and  beautiful user interface so anyone can use
  • WIFI everything
  • Take action by using scenarios

So in this article series we will try to come up with a complete solution that will fulfill all requirements. And we will take it one device at a time