What more is there to say? Drop by and tour Saskatoon TechWorks on June 2, 2018 between 10am and 5pm.
Author: Scott Walde
How to Get Your CH340 USB to Serial Device Working
Many of our Arduino compatible devices contain a CH340 USB to Serial IC instead of the much more expensive FTDI chip. The CH340 is common in Chinese product, but not as common in products designed in the rest of the world. What this ends up meaning is, it is sometimes problematic getting them working on your computer. To make things easier, the following drivers have been tested by us:
Windows Driver (2016-09-27)
Official Mac Driver (May have troubles 10.9 and later)
Signed Mac Driver (Should work with 10.9+)
Note that Windows 10 appears to include the driver, as does Linux. One extremely edge case, though, to be aware of: As of this writing, the Linux driver for the CH340 does not support parity. The STM32Duino we sell requires parity when installing the bootloader. To save yourself hours of hair-pulling, know that you will either need to use a different USB to Serial adaptor, or a different OS, or patch your kernel driver.
Loading a Bootloader on the STM32 Blue Pill
Here is how I loaded the bootloader on a new STM32 Blue Pill.
Installed Arduino 1.8.5
Tools->Boards->Boards Manager
Install SAM Cortex-M3
Download:
https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/Arduino_STM32/archive/master.zip
Unzip to My Documents->Arduino->Hardware
Rename folder. (Remove -master, so it is simply Arduino_STM32)
Navigate into drivers->win
Execute install_drivers.bat as administrator. (Right-click, run as administrator)
Visit:
https://github.com/rogerclarkmelbourne/STM32duino-bootloader/tree/master/binaries
And select:
Generic_boot20_pc13.bin
Save it in “tools/win/”
Set the Boot0 jumper to 1
Wire up the CH340 USB to TTL-232, G-G, TX-A10, RX-A9
USB (for power)
stm32flash.exe -w generic_boot20_pc13.bin COM4 (whatever com port your CH340 is on)
Put jumper back to 0
Reset
Use Arduino to upload a sketch to test. (Blink, for example)
Rotary Attachment for Goliath (and, possibly, the laser cutter)
Somehow this message got lost in my inbox. So, when he says “Tues night” he’s actually referring to December 12th. Anyways, better late than never. Here is Rylan’s writeup about the new tool he made for us:
Hey everyone! On Tues night after the meeting I made a portable tail stock to match Albert’s motorized Chuck. It Took me all night but lucky I scrounged enough pieces of metal and the whole thing came together in one night — paint and all! I turned most of the parts on the lathe. My favourite part about the build was using a flexure and a clamp to adjust the height of the bushing near the handle at the back, that along with rotation of the large ring sitting on the flexure allowed me to align the back bushing very well despite the way that parts like to warp and shift as welds cool. Putting the ACME thread up on top instead of hidden underneath the carriage as is typical is a feature in this design as exposing the treads makes it them easy to clean with all the CNC cuttings.
This rotary attachment could also be easily be placed in the laser cutter and on the CNC router.
Enjoy,
Rylan
Saskatoon Combat Robotics Club Promo
This promo for SCRC Kilobots was shot at TechWorks one morning this week.
Soap Making Workshop
Rylan made a time lapse video of today’s Soap Making Workshop!
How To Publish A Book
This is last Tuesday’s presentation. Jefferson takes us through some of the logistics of going from a manuscript to a finished, printed book.
Store Updates
Have you checked out the TechWorks Store recently? Everything is back in stock and we have added a dozen new items recently.
Upcoming Workshops!
It has been a while, but summer is over, the leaves are falling, and people are starting to think about Christmas presents. How about making your gifts this year? We are hosting a couple workshops to help you out with that:
Soap Making. Learn to make your own soap. Cold process soap takes a bit of time to cure, but if you make it on November 16th it should be ready to use by Christmas.
Laser Cut Decorations (link to come). Learn to use the laser cutter at Saskatoon TechWorks. And, make decorations at the same time! Use them yourself, or give them away.
Saskatoon TechWorks Store!
Do you have a project idea but don’t want to wait 6-8 weeks for an order to arrive from eBay? Did you know that Saskatoon TechWorks has a store that is stocked with a variety of common items you might want to use in your project? Browse our inventory here. Now, admittedly, it’s a bit heavy on the Micro/Arduino side. What would YOU like to see stocked in our store? Let me know!
Yes, I did work at Radio Shack back in the early 90s. Why do you ask?