Member postings for Yuriy Krushelnytskiy

Frances,

I know a number of people who bought the "Digital Readout Bars with Dedicated Remote Display" scales from ArcEuro. iGaging is a California-based distributor that re-barges various scales. The scales in question are made by Shahe and there is no difference between iGaging and the generic version.

Regards

Yuriy

John,

It's a bit counter-intuitive, but BlueTooth is actually more resilient to shop noise. There is unlikely to be a piece of equipment that can generate 2.4 GHz interference. USB has a potential of creating a large ground loop that can pick up all sorts of things. More importantly, on the software side BT is implemented on the Android OS level; USB is a custom driver written by "some guy". It works OK on most tablets with many USB-to-serial chips but not all tablets implement the OS side of things in the same way. For instance, I test the app on about doze different tablets: Google Nexus, five different Samsungs, Google Pixel C, Amazon Fire and a few cheap Chinse no-name devices. USB works on all of them, except one of the Chinese tablets crashes if I connect via USB right after the tablet has been disconnected from the charger. There is a version of Asus tablet that is horribly unstable and I still can't figure out why; Lenovo tablets hate this particular USB driver, and so on.

That said, if you live in the part of the world where Amazon ships to, you can get Amazon Fire tablet for $50 (USD) or about 40 quid...

Regards

Yuriy

John,

There really isn't that much to it. If you're using Arduino, USB should just work with most boards. FTDI-based boards work fairly well. The newer ones "often work" (the driver TouchDRO uses in theory supports all Arduino version and more, but it's been more reliable with FTDI).

That said, there is no reason to use USB and all sorts of reasons to not use it. BlueTooth is much more reliable in a workshop environment. Unless you have a tablet that has USB but no BlueTooth, I would skip USB and stick with wireless.

Regards

Yuriy

Edited By Yuriy Krushelnytskiy on 26/08/2016 03:05:15

Paul,

Glad I could help.

Regards

Yuriy

P.S. upgrading from "iGaging" to glass/magnetic scales takes six resistors and different firmware version once you're ready

Apparently I'm not that good at math to move by 1 5/6 you'd type 1+5/6

Paul,

They are the same thing (these ones are: http://www.arceurotrade.co.uk/Catalogue/Measurement/Digital-Readouts-with-Dedicated-Remote-Display). iGaging is a US distributor for various things and their "DigiMag" scales are made by Shahe, as are the AccuRemote scales.

I haven't given much though to displaying fractional sizes but you can convert from fractional sizes to decimals in the app by typing a fraction into the "preset dimension" box or any other input box. If you need to move the spindle/carriage by 1 5/6 of an inch you can type 1+1/6 into the preset box and then move the axis until it reads 0.000 and you're there.

Hope this helps

Yuriy

Michael,

That's correct. The app can interface directly with Arduino (and other board via an FTDI breakout board).

Regards

Yuriy

I'm not certain this tachometer would work in the first place. Two issues:

1. Bicycle wheel doesn't spin at 2000 RPM, and to hit that price point they probably didn't over-engineer the electronics... (at 400 RPM the bicycle would be traveling around 60 km/h...)

2. I'm pretty sure that magnet will add a fair bit of vibration to the spindle at higher RPMs.

Finally, I second Neil's sentiment Otherwise why would I even want to have a machine shop in my garage when most of the things I make are either "worthless" (steam engines, for example) or can be bough cheaper off eBay...

Regards

Yuriy

Neil,

Just replied to your PM. Thank you much for sharing the code. My whole project is licensed under GPL and I will make sure you proper credit for the code.

Thank you

Yuriy

Michael,

Thank you for the link. Frankly, I agree 100% with his comments.

When I started with the project, iGaging scales were all I could afford. I have glass scales on my mill now, but you can't imagine how many emails I get per week asking for the "Chinese Scale" version. For people on a budget iGaging and "Chinese" scales offer a good compromise, and the total cost can be under 100 Pounds ($150 USD or so) if you already have a tablet or an old phone. I used iGaging scales on a Sieg mill (X2 and then X3) for almost three years and it worked well enough for the price. It was WAY better than counting revolutions, and for very precise stuff I still had the dials.

Glass scales are much nicer and ridiculously accurate, but even with "careful shopping" they set me back $450 USD.

Thank you

Yuriy

Neil,

I'm Yuriy from "Yiriy's Toys". I've received an email (presumably from a member of this forum) that told me about your Atmel code that can read Chinese scales...

I just posted the new version of MSP430 firmware that can read the standard "Chinese" scales, and am working on a version that can read a mix of different scales. Apparently there is a lot of interest in an Arduino-based controller that can do the same. I don't think Arduino can handle the task (due to all the overhead posed by the abstraction layer) and I don't have enough experience with AVR programming. Moreover, at this point I have more on my plate with this project that I can handle in my free time... Would you consider either sharing your code, or somehow making the precompiled firmware available to the community? (I can host the files on my blog or link to your URL).

Please feel free to PM/email me at ycroosh at gmail.com (or respond here).

Thank you in advance

Yuriy