u/cristi_baluta

Given the atrocious state of cam/controller softwares on mac (performance and ui), i decided to try my luck to see how far i can get. Would be nice to make the entire studio, but i’ll be happy with just the controller and then use the cam from fusion. The controller has some functionality working already, all the commands from makera wiki are defined and ready to use, but i cannot send the nc to the cnc or preview the toolpaths yet. What bothers me the most is the 5 step quiz to start the job and that some settings are not even preserved. The cam is even worse how much scrolling you need to do and how much info is hidden.

Tested also the community app but that is not much better either, when you resize the window the whole ui stretches…

It will be opensource if someone interested to contribute.

This was after i made a mess all over the machine, i will need to clean that somehow, i am most worried about the ones getting into the rails.

Bonus, i put a masking tape also at the bottom of the material so after the contour the piece doesn’t fly, no need for tabs.

Hi, so i already know i can use 2D projections for this and it works well, however i want to understand the 3D pockets. To do this hole in software i simply chose the wall of the hole and used a bit smaller than the hole. What happens is that it’s doing one pass in the hole then instead going down to do the next pass it goes up and does a lot more passes at the starting Z. Only then goes back to do the next pass in the hole. It is doing this for every pass wasting 90% of the time for nothing. This also shows in the CAM but i didn’t realise it till now and i don’t know how to remove it. Is this expected behavior?

Hope it’s ok for one last spam for today. First, i’m utterly impressed with the noise of the Z1, at least for what i’m milling, i was making all kind of plans on how to reduce it to not disturb the neighbours, but no, it’s dead silent, i cannot really hear it behind a wall, i could run it even at night. An iphone app measured 66db near it, 40-50 being the normal noise level here, which is like no noise at all, no car traffic no nothing.

Back to my problem, this is the first piece i did, i’m trying to replicate the plastic part from the right. There’s only one problem, the 3 simetric round pockets are actually not round. They should have a diameter of 3mm and i’ve used a 2mm bit. I didn’t pay attention to what it did, could be that it didn’t even try to do it. Why do you think it did that? The settings used for this operation were default cause i rushed, for the other features i put manually a 0.1mm Step Over, this is 1.26.

I’m also a bit confused about the finishing, each hole has like a finishing pass which i didn’t ask for and you can see all those circles.

I need to mill it because i don't have such a drilling bit, but as you can see in the second screenshot the toolpath stops where the bigger hole ended, although the object selected for this operation was he small hole. The software seems to autodetect the bottom and i cannot even choose myself the depth.

When i was a kid i always wanted a digital cassette player, but they were way too expensive, and instead i tried to convert one myself and actually managed to do the play part, but in the end i broke the hole thing. I bought this for 12eur. I knew it’s broken, but i’m in disbelief of what i’m seeing here and the previous attempts to fix it, they even put a screw inside the power port when assembling back. When i saw the buttons not making any click i was afraid the whole board is missing, or the buttons being placed on a separate board, but beside the belt and the actual buttons nothing seems to be missing. The motor seems to touch something and the 2 brass wheels have a tiny movement. There’s no sign of life when i insert the battery, i accept any advice you might have, it’s the first time trying to fix one.

This is a flex cable made by me, but i wrongly made it too short. Since i had 5 copies i thought i’m gonna sacrifice one to extend the other one. I scraped the protection layer, put solder on both cables, joined them one in the continuation of the other overlapping a bit but no matter how hard i tried i couldn’t join the solder from one cable to the other, the height of the cable was the only gap between them. After one hour of tries i had a revelation, i completely overlapped, like folding, so now applying heat in the area will join the solder since they stay face to face. Then i folded the cable and now i have a longer and working cable. Even better would have been to scrap the cable on the opposite side so i don’t need to fold it.

I need to do the same for a usbc with 24 pins, the pads are a bit bigger but i feel i’ll have the same problem not being able to deposit enough solder, any advice on how to do this? Unfortunately i cannot do the same trick since the layout will not match if flipped.

I build an extremely lightweight version of Adobe Bridge dedicated to culling raw files. I've used Bridge all my life because i hate importing photos in a black boxed app like Lightroom & CO, but Bridge is very heavy (and still on intel at the time i stopped upgrading), so i took the layout and improved on its functionality and got it under 10Mb and low memory footprint.

https://apps.apple.com/app/imagin-raw/id6760548347?mt=12

Features:
- 100% native, SwiftUI and AppKit for thumbnails
- give access only to the folders you want, individual folders, or the entire Photos folder for the best experience
- rating and labeling compatible with Adobe sidecars. For jpegs it is done in the file without reencoding it
- reject photos then delete all at once
- copy photos from sd cards in 2 simultaneous locations. Many options to rename and organize into subfolders are available.
- find duplicates and similar photos and view them in Review mode, much easier to decide which to keep or delete than going back and forth in the main view between similar images.
- search for files and folders using the macOS spotlight engine, your photos are not indexed by the app and stored in proprietary DBses
- add black frame around your exported photos and reexport as tiff, this is to fit 2:3 photos in 3:4 format for instagram.
- purge the cache on individual folders or all at once (in case you try the app and decide it’s trash)

Problem: I don’t like the process of importing my photos inside a black boxed app, I don’t know what happens with them and how i’ll back them up, and it’s probably a trauma from the iTunes days when importing music was duplicating and hiding it. That’s why I use Adobe Bridge to manage my photos. The problem with Bridge though is that it’s an extremely heavy app and slow to launch, cpu and memory intensive, and my last version was still on intel and felt abandoned.

That’s why I built Imagin Raw https://apps.apple.com/app/imagin-raw/id6760548347?mt=12

The main goal was to have a very lightweight app and clean interface that doesn’t waste any space. It is used only for organizing and culling photos, the editing is done in an external editor of your choice (i cannot do better than the established apps so no point in wasting time like others do). My favourite feature is the photo alignment to top-left, i can place a pip youtube window on top without overlapping the photos too much.

Features:
- 100% native, SwiftUI and AppKit for thumbnails
- give access only to the folders you want, individual folders, or the entire Photos folder for the best experience
- rating and labeling compatible with Adobe sidecars. For jpegs it is done in the file without reencoding it
- reject photos then delete all at once
- copy photos from sd cards in 2 simultaneous locations. Many options to rename and organize into subfolders are available.
- find duplicates and similar photos and view them in review mode, much easier to decide which to keep or delete. Here i have another killer feature, you can rate/label/reject the photos without actually selecting them, just hover.
- search for files and folders using the macos spotlight engine, your photos are not indexed by the app
- add black frame around your exported photos and reexport as tiff, this is so i can fit 2:3 photos on 3:4 for instagram.
- purge the cache on individual folders or all at once (in case you try the app and decide it’s trash)

Comparison: compared to Bridge, Imagin Raw is much lighter, 4Mb vs 2Gb. You’d say that i left something out for that size, but i think i left out the useless things, i have the essential things and some tools on top that Bridge doesn’t, like finding duplicates and group by day. The layout is the same as Bridge: files column (can be hidden quickly with C), thumbnails (2 grid types switch with G), then the big preview. Previewing videos does not even compare by any stretch of the imagination.

Where Bridge is in advantage is the editing applied to the thumbnails and previews, i cannot use the ACR engine to apply those changes like Bridge does but i will try to apply the basic edits in a future version. You can see though which photos were edited and which not

Pricing: First version is free in the AppStore, i might charge from the next update.

I am also preparing an iOS version from the same codebase to replace the mess apple did in Photos, but i will also make it a scouting app.

Problem: I don’t like the process of importing my photos inside a black boxed app, I don’t know what happens with them and how i’ll back them up, and it’s probably a trauma from the iTunes days when importing music was duplicating and hiding it. That’s why I use Adobe Bridge to manage my photos. The problem with Bridge though is that it’s an extremely heavy app and slow to launch, cpu and memory intensive, and my last version was still on intel and felt abandoned.

That’s why I built Imagin Raw https://apps.apple.com/app/imagin-raw/id6760548347?mt=12

The main goal was to have a very lightweight app and clean interface that doesn’t waste any space. It is used only for organizing and culling photos, the editing is done in an external editor of your choice (i cannot do better than the established apps so no point in wasting time like others do). My favourite feature is the photo alignment to top-left, i can place a pip youtube window on top without overlapping the photos too much.

Features:
- 100% native, SwiftUI and AppKit for thumbnails
- give access only to the folders you want, individual folders, or the entire Photos folder for the best experience
- rating and labeling compatible with Adobe sidecars. For jpegs it is done in the file without reencoding it
- reject photos then delete all at once
- copy photos from sd cards in 2 simultaneous locations. Many options to rename and organize into subfolders are available.
- find duplicates and similar photos and view them in review mode, much easier to decide which to keep or delete. Here i have another killer feature, you can rate/label/reject the photos without actually selecting them, just hover.
- search for files and folders using the macos spotlight engine, your photos are not indexed by the app
- add black frame around your exported photos and reexport as tiff, this is so i can fit 2:3 photos on 3:4 for instagram.
- purge the cache on individual folders or all at once (in case you try the app and decide it’s trash)

Comparison: compared to Bridge, Imagin Raw is much lighter, 4Mb vs 2Gb. You’d say that i left something out for that size, but i think i left out the useless things, i have the essential things and some tools on top that Bridge doesn’t, like finding duplicates and group by day. The layout is the same as Bridge: files column (can be hidden quickly with C), thumbnails (2 grid types switch with G), then the big preview. Previewing videos does not even compare by any stretch of the imagination.

Where Bridge is in advantage is the editing applied to the thumbnails and previews, i cannot use the ACR engine to apply those changes like Bridge does but i will try to apply the basic edits in a future version. You can see though which photos were edited and which not

Pricing: First version is free in the AppStore, and code available on https://github.com/cristibaluta/Imagin-Raw I might put a price from the next version but github will remain free but updates probably not in sync and you will have to check it manually for new versions anyway.

AI disclosure: I started this in February, i vibe coded all the functionality, then June came and AI was not ‘free’ anymore and the process of deslopifying started. Now it’s in a state where the code works the way i want, but there are still things to refactor and new features to build.

I am also preparing an iOS version from the same codebase to replace the mess apple did in Photos, but i will also make it a scouting app.

This are from a camera used on the front dial, it has 1.8x1.3mm. The most i could find was GP2S60A from Sharp, but it has 3.2x1.7mm and don’t know about the pinout if it matches either. https://www.mouser.co.uk/datasheet/3/267/1/gp2s60\_e.pdf

Since the copilot credit vanished in the first 3 days of the month, it is a good moment to deslopify my app that i started in March and i built almost exclusively with AI. I spent the whole day only on this issue, and althought i didn’t figure it out it was still incredibly rewarding.

It’s a photo app that first loads the list of photos then reads the exifs from each of them. The AI did something very complex with batches and i wanted to simplify it with withTaskGroups. I didn’t work with before. The problem is that for 1000 photos takes about 15sec and the UI is blocked and can’t figure out why because it does not run on the main thread. I understand that it floods the concurrency queue but still don’t get why is blocking the main thread.

In the end i went with the good old queue and not only that the UI is not blocked but the performance improved to 2sec instead 15, probably because it uses all the available threads, 10 of them. But i still want to figure out the grouptask, what am i missing?

I moved the EVF of a camera from middle to left. In order to do that i needed to extend the cable. The connector had 61 pins on 2 rows, 0.4mm steps. As tools I had hot air, soldering gun with very thin tip, solder paste, very poor electronic microscope, and no stencil because i was cheap and needed to do it only one.

My first fpcb was totally wrong, learned from reddit that not all wires should be the same. They were also all of them on one side, so imagine that to reach the 2nd row i had to wire between the pins of the first row. It was impossible to solder without shorting them, but it was also wrong by design because the connector landed in the wrong orientation. So i redid it, where the original cable had thick wires I also did thick wires. I also rewired the second row through the second layer and came back to the first layer right under the connector, 60 vias in total.

First attempt was with hot air from top. This of course melted the connector but also many shorts. Tried from scratch from the bottom with the same connector to practice on the pins, but the cable was just not straight so not really possible to solder uniformly.

2nd attempt was to fix flat the cable on a copper plate and heat it from the underneath. Waited and waited but the solder paste was not melting at all, so i moved to the soldering iron. Managed to break the 2nd connector too but it was promising.

3rd attempt i did only with the soldering iron. Added a bit of soldering paste all over the pads and started to solder slowly, also used the wick to remove the shorts. With my poor microscope you can see only shapes, you can’t really distinguish if it’s soldered or not. Not even with a jewelry magnifying loupe couldn’t figure this out. I had to test each pin with a sharp blade. To the ones that were not stable i put a very small blob of paste and heat the pin, no short was made in the process.

My next challenge is to solder a micro optocoupler where i can’t see the pins. I did it successfully for a bigger one.