[Arm-netbook] riki200 v3 first print: success

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 10:15 AM, Elena ``of Valhalla''
<valhalla-l at trueelena.org> wrote:
> On 2017-09-18 at 07:07:04 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>>  the entire arduino software ecosystem was never designed to actually
>> give people proper access to the hardware.  anything that's a 180mb
>> download and requires a 200mb runtime environment to compile and
>> upload an executable that's only 16k in size *really* isn't going to
>> end well.
>
> Well, IIRC they do bundle gcc(-avr), which tends to be quite big, but
> doesn't really need to be downloaded again if you already have it from
> your distribution, and the runtime environment is only needed if you
> want to use their IDE instead of your favourite editor + a Makefile (and
> there is (was?) at least one example Makefile somewhere in the arduino
> package).

 yehyeh... it wasn't always like that.

> Looking at the installed sizes on debian (which has an older version for
> license reasons) I see that the libraries are about 6½MB and the IDE
> itself is just 1½MB.

 phil was instrumental in arranging that.

> https://packages.debian.org/sid/arduino-core
> https://packages.debian.org/sid/arduino

 yep he recommended to the arduino package maintainer that the actual
core parts not be glommed together with a runtime and IDE and
everything else.

 then there's avr-utils, a few other things, the libraries as well:
you can now basically mix and match and use editors and minimal build
dependencies... but seriously that's *not* the way it's normally done
[by beginners]


> To really reduce size they would have to drop gcc, but I don't think
> that would be a reasonable choice for just the aim of side reduction.

 yehyeh.

> Other than assuming that beginners will be fine with just their IDE (and
> targeting their documentation at them), I don't think they ever did
> anything to prevent people from going deeper on their own, as they
> learned more, including using the arduino board as an AVR devboard
> completely ignoring the arduino software.

 yeah if you've ever heard of the OSMC (Open Source Motor Controller)
that uses a PIC, i bought one back in... 2003 or so.  1,000 lines of
c, using not even gcc.  no libraries, nothing.

 .... when i first heard about arduino i was really shocked at how
much the dev environment was.

>>  so they're stepping well outside of the "normal" boundaries - good
>> luck to them.
>
> Fully agree here: what they are doing lately makes them at the very
> least quite irrelevant to the Open Hardware world.

 ho hum :)    i really wanted to use RADDS because the Duet 0.8.5 and
the Duet-NG are almost as much as an entire 3D printer can be sourced
for here... only to find that the damn thing's non-free!   they're
happy to provide a non-commercial license...

 ... it was the last straw.  i spent the weekend making an improved
version of RAMPS 1.4 - called RD3D (yes after R2D2...) and it's been
sent for first PCB manufacturing, already, this morning.  yes i rushed
it, yes i realised i'm using only a 500mA regulator which means it
might be current-limited: i'll just have to drop a different LDO in
place using some wires.

 http://reprap.org/wiki/RD3D/1.0

 but guess what?  it's GPLv3 and it's *properly open*.  and awesome.
6 steppers (RAMPS has 5) and 4 MOSFETs (RAMPS has 3) and an on-board
MicroSD card and and and.

 it was a very... busy... weekend :)

l.