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Maker Bot Day 4: Spaceship Thing-O-Matic
Sometimes, when I am really and truly immersed in something, I find myself making some truly banal, self evident non sequitur, but then treating them as if they are the most profound insights ever gleaned into the human experience. The last week with my dad has reminded me that this is a family trait.
As we were triple and quadruple checking the wiring for the Thing-O-Matic -- the last stage in the build process before we are able to start seeing what this baby can crank out, my dad offered up this gem:
"Imagine getting a space ship off the earth."
To which I replied, "Yup. I bet there was a lot of wiring." Because there probably was.
So I just wanted to take a minute to commend the men and women who put rockets into space.
A side shot of the Space Shuttle Atlantis under construction, c/o NASA
Let me now bring you to t-minus 10 seconds before the Crawford family's own private shuttle launch. Having now successfully constructed and wired together the TOM, we were moments away from what we had been waiting for over the past week:
Wired up and ready to go...?
Ethernet cable: Connected.
Power: ON
Replicator G (the open source 3D printing program that controls the TOM): Loaded.
Of course this happened:
[11:50:20] Loading machine: Thingomatic w/ Automated Build Platform
[11:50:21] Loading simulator.
[11:50:21] Loading driver: replicatorg.drivers.gen3.Sanguino3GDriver
[11:51:23] Read timed out.
[11:51:23] Packet timed out!
[11:51:26] Read timed out.
[11:51:26] Packet timed out!
[11:51:26] Null version reported!
...
[11:51:34] No connection; trying to pulse RTS to reset device.
[11:51:39] Read timed out.
[11:51:39] Packet timed out!
[11:51:42] Read timed out.
[11:51:42] Packet timed out!
...
[11:52:11] Null version reported!
[11:52:11] Unable to connect to firmware.
Well, ok then.
Me, looking slightly crazy, moments before the failed first test.Oh to return to those happy days.
At some point in the future I'll get into the specifics of what I did to try to resolve this massive let down, but right now the massive disappointment I feel is too raw for me to articulate anything. So, like I do in most situations that overwhelm me, I'll leave it to William Shatner to speak to my grief.
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Suffice it to say that it got so bad, that I had to ask for help from the Makerbot forum. This is another topic that I plan to return to, but one thing I will note is that the Makerbot community is awesome. The depth of some of the other questions on the site had me worried that I would be out of my league, and had me tempted to email Bre and his team directly at the first sign of trouble. I'm glad that I didn't, however, because the amount of patience and willingness to help me troubleshoot has been remarkable.
To wrap up this post, I'd like to share three highlights from the immediate aftermath of what shall now be referred to as "the Connection to Firmware" debacle.
First, my colleague Anthony Townsend has been added to my Hall of Fame for people who should keep their "advice" to themselves. After sending Anthony the above error messages, he shared these pearls of wisdom:
Thanks Anthony
Second, after spending almost an entire day trying to figure out what we had done wrong -- going back over wiring, testing connections on the electronic boards that control the TOM, etc. -- and having posted on the forum I mentioned earlier, I was momentarily heartened when my Dad called out from the living room:
"Hey, someone else is having the same problem that we are having!"
YES! Misery loves company and all that ...
"And he is posting about it today."
What a fortunate coincidence!
"Weird, he seems to be in Canada."
Oh no.
"Dad, what is his username?"
"MC Canuck!"
"That is me, Dad. MC for Mathias Crawford, Canuck because I am Canadian."
Finally, I'll end with a paragraph that I wrote at the end of the long day of being inches from the finish line and unable to move forward:
"this is the worst kind of frustration. I have spent 5 hours trying to solve a problem by doing the same things over and over again. The community has provided no insights, and I am left trying to print something before my brain explodes and I smash this robot against the wall."
These are dark days indeed.