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This is Karl’s Fabacademy page for Fabacademy 2022.

Electronics fabrication

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Goal This week I set myself a relatively ambitious goal, as I wanted to make a hello-world board, that could be used in my final project to control them motor drivers. After talking with Kris I decided to plan a board that could be able to support serial RX/TX-connections with the motor-driver-boards. For the motor driver, I was planning to use as a basis the board made earlier by kris at (https://gitlab. [Read More]

Week 15 Networking and communication

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Assingnment outline Follow the steps below to complete your assignment. Explore the WiFi capabilities of the XIAO ESP32C3 board. Plug it into one of the boards you produced earlier. Program the XIAO board to spawn an Access Point and create a simple REST API. The REST API should have endpoints for controlling output device(s) of your board as well as reading input. Document as you go and publish content on a page on your documentation website. [Read More]

Week 15 Networking and communication

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

I2C for all This weeks project for me was to familiarize myself with I2C-protocol, and see if I could use that for all my device communications. First of all I configured my rasperry Pi, according to the steps provided here. In practice this meant just enabling the I2C protocol for Rasperry Pi and rebooting the device. I also needed to make a small chip for the rasperry Pi, to introduce pullup between voltage and CLK and CLD-lines. [Read More]

Week 16 Interface and Application Programming

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

##Assingment outline Follow the steps below to complete your assignment. -Write an application that interfaces a user with an input and/or output device that you made. -Include a hero video and source files of the application in your documentation. -Describe what you learned about application and interface building on your documentation website. -Submit a link to your assignment page here. Demonstration of an UI built with Dash Dash is an commercial framework for building data science apps. [Read More]

Week 17 Wildcard week

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Self made lab beaker? (and lab glassware in the future?) I decided to test my skills in glass-making and recreate a lab-glass beaker I would also plan to ask the glass workshop masters if using clean glass-waste from labs (broken glassware) in glass manufacturing would be fine. Lab glass is called PYREX-glass and is chemically more inert than usual varieties of glass. However, as I am just melting it, it should work fine I hope? [Read More]

Week 18 Applications and Implications

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Final Project My final project is an experimental device capable of supporting 18 simultaneous growth experiments, with 9 of them containing active pH-monitoring and adjustment via CO2-valves and diffusers Below is a section by section description how this final project utilizes the skills I have learned during digital fabrication courses, ending with a Bill of materials for the current iteration of the project. 2D design and substractive fabrication The current iteration of the system does not incorporate much 2D-design, but the housing of the previous iteration of the growth system is a good exampe of both 2D-design and substractive fabrication (CNC-milling). [Read More]

Week 19 Invention, IP and Income

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

##Assingment outline My plan for the final project is to use it as a scientific apparatus for an upcoming scientific article. It will also act as a basis for a development of a larger-scale (~200L) algal cultivation system, that is currently in development. For a 1 minute explanatation video of the device, click on the image below. TBD (Video for last years iteration can be found here) The final slide for the project in 2023 TBD [Read More]

Week10 embedded programming

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Individual Assignments Read the datasheet for your microcontroller I read the datasheet for attiny 1614,1616 and 1617 (as they are provided in the same document) In principle, what I understood is that these chips share similar basic (processing speed, memory, etc.) functionalities, but the main difference is in the number of pinouts and number of peripheral devices they can control or be connnected to. To be honest, the part I found most useful was just the description of pinouts. [Read More]

Week11 Molding and casting

 Posted on January 1, 0001  |  Karl Mihhels

Individual Assignments design a mold around the stock and tooling that you’ll be using, mill it (rough cut + three-axis finish cut), and use it to cast parts design a mold I desigened a mold in FreeCAD, that would suit a thermometer PCB that I will use for my final project. The idea is that the mold would allow me to encase the part in clear epoxy. I used a FreeCAD addon called KiCadStepUp, That allows using of the 3D models present in KiCaD-libraries, and import your PCB as a FreeCAD-model. [Read More]