idle hands

Dear blog,

I know I'm supposed to write in you every-day, but I just wont.

However, today after getting the kids at my parents place where they spent the night, because me and the wife had our five year anniversary yesterday. That's right, five years since we got married. Wood-wedding if you google it. No jokes allowed! ok. She made this awesome painting for me:

I took the image with my macintosh, becuase it's hot and I'm lazy.

Anyways, dear diary blog after we got the kids we went to Billeberga, where they had a village garage sale. I really didnt find anything that I was into until we spotted two lasers, the kind you have to Disco's. 50 SEK a piece they where, and we got a third one for free to get spare parts from. The guy who sold them got superexcited when I told him that I bought a fog-machine at Thomann. AT THEIR STORE. in Germany. Yeah, remember when I told you me and golden rocket pony took a care to Hildesheim? Anyways, the wife was so into going to yardsales she wanted to go to one more. I mean, we went and saw a movie yesterday (Prince of Persia) and ate some food, but I did not make her a painting. So we went from Billeberga to Eslöv and stopped at Gårdstånga to get some food. I had a french hot dog with french mustard. Then we went to Harlösa and went to another loppis. They had a jump-castle so the kids where a little satisfied. I bought a BMX for 50 sek. (thats about 5 dollars). I'm going to be kick-ass on the BMX'er. Then we went to Vombsjön and took a swim, It is the coldest sea in the whole wide world, it might say so on the wikipedia link after I've edited the page. Then we went to Löberöd and ate at the Tha-wagon it's one of the best thai-resturaunts I've ever been to, and the reason we went by Löberöd. Then we had some soft-ice at the Café in Löberöd. I'm not really sure if you're allowed to call yourself a café if you dont serve coffe, but what the hell, it's the country. Then we went home. Hooray, I made some lattes and put about 50 tomato plants into the ground. My mom had some left that they couldent sell as small plants, So I just planted them and hope that they will survive to get some tomatoes/tomatos on them.

If you're wondering about this blog post, fear not, the heat is making my brain simmer and my fingers type what I think. Yes, I  think that slow right now! oh what the hell, a few more exclamation marks before I push publish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats it.

I'm on vacation.

It's nice.

I'm sitting in the shade, typing on my laptop, listening to the songs entering the jazzhole compo, watching the kids playing with (not in,as much) the pool.

It might have been a bad decision putting it next to the swings.

I've just bought a lot of clear plastic boxes so I can organize my workroom a bit better, and finish that sound-wall.

But now it's so nice out, I'll just sit here enjoying life.

So here is my simple little processing sketch that made all the nice circles.

Here is the source and example in a nice zipfile: LazerDirector

And here is the source, copy pasted, nice!

/* Lazor Director is a processing.org sketch to make halftone images into svg files that can be sent to a laser-cutter service,
examples of these are

http://www.cutyourway.com/
http://ponoko.com/
and
http://www.1scale1.com/

Please note that the processing image is not a real representation of how the svg looks, the svg has far better resolution

*/

PrintWriter output; // We use this to pritnt the svg file

PImage photo; //the original image that we want to convert to halftoneish svg

void setup()
{
  smooth(); //we want the smoothest possible edges in the image we see, can be removed for speed

  photo = loadImage("lobo.png"); //input image, that is, here is where you load what you want to halftone-hole (make sure it has the same size as the svg file output(se further down)) 
  size((int)(photo.width), (int)(photo.height));  //change processings window output widht and height

  output = createWriter("output.svg"); 

  background(0);  //setting the background to black, this is because I have black pastic to cut out from, add here your materials color

/*this is the header of the svg file. , 1080*1080 is 12"*12" (according to inkscape) */
  output.println("");
  output.println(""); //1080 * 1080 is 12"x12"

  output.println(" Test");
  output.println("");
  output.println(" Layer 1");

  drawCircles2(photo, 12); //the function that does the finding of the circles, second parameter is how large chunks (in pixels)it shall search in.
  output.println("");
  output.println("");
  save("output.png");
  output.flush();
  output.close();  

}  

void draw()
{
//nothing to do here
}  

void drawCircles2(PImage photo, int spacing)
{
  for(int j = 0; j < photo.height; j+=spacing) //looping through the image, in squares of 
  {
    for(int i = 0; i < photo.width; i+=spacing)
    {
      PImage segment = photo.get(i, j, spacing, spacing); //cuting out a whole
      float brighnezz = getAreaBrightness(segment); //meassuring the brighness
      float cSize =( brighnezz/51.2); //adjusting the size of the whole depending on the brightnezz

      if(cSize >1.5) //to small holes, we dont care about (was 0.5 in the one I show over at:
      {
        fill(255); //white here because I want to get a feel for how it would look if added light behind
        stroke(255); //same here
        /*writing the svg information to file */
        output.println(" +cSize+"\" cy=\""+j+"\" cx=\""+i+"\"/> ");
        /* drawing preview on screen */
        ellipse(i, j,cSize, cSize);
      }
    }
  }
}   

int getAreaBrightness(PImage area)
{
  int bval = 0, count = 1;

  for(int i = 0; i < area.width; i++)
  {
    for(int j = 0; j < area.height; j++)
    {
      color check = area.get(i, j); 

      bval += brightness(check); //thank you processign for having all the dedious task's as functions!
      count++;
    }
  }
  return (int)(bval/count);
}

I've made some improvements to my cut holes with a laser processing.org sketch. Now it outputs .svg files that are correctly formatted for cutyourway.com

Last night after perfecting the script (witch I will soon publish) I sent another order to be processed.

This time it's Lobo one of my favorite comicbook anti-heroes.

Here's the resulting image:

And here is the SVG: output.svg

Yeah, I know it's stupid and will probably take loads and loads of time, but I want to.

I want one that can drill holes and mill stuff. So i don't really need that much z-axis.

large x and y would be nice.
I've got a bunch of stepper motors already, so that is not a big expense. (none)

I need some way to control them, so I was thinking of the EasyDriver, using 3 of them connected to one Arduino, I think I'll be set.

Programming the thing will be easy, putting the mechanics together might be the hardest part, but I have a good idea about what I could do there.