Arduino based USB Pendant for Linuxcnc

andypugh wrote: You can get laser-printable plastic film (sold as waterproof paper) which might work well.
I bought a few sheets from eBay a while ago (it's rather expensive by the ream)

That sounds ideal, I don't have access to a colour laser printer unfortunately.

r00t4rd3d wrote: I am going to print mine on some of that glossy printer paper made for photos.

That is essentially what I used, it just had a self adhesive backing to it

ArcEye do you still have the keypad graphic you made and if so can you post it?

Yes, it is in OpenOffice .odt format, zip attached

regards

Can you plastic laminate it after printing with one of those cheap thermal laminators?

John

BigJohnT wrote: Can you plastic laminate it after printing with one of those cheap thermal laminators?
John

That was my idea, trouble is that laminating makes it very stiff, don't know if you can get different grades of sleeve and use one which protects but leaves it fairly flexible.

I wonder what would happen if you only laminated the top and not the bottom? Just looking at McMaster Carr for no logical reason and they have single sided 0.006" lamination up to 0.020" double sided so yes there is different grades.

John

I have not seen single sided laminating sleeve, presumably the back does not adhere and can be peeled off afterwards?
I'll have a look at what is available over here

regards

ArcEye wrote: That was my idea, trouble is that laminating makes it very stiff, don't know if you can get different grades of sleeve and use one which protects but leaves it fairly flexible.

Self-adhesive library film?
www.staples.co.uk/bts-offers/bts-office-...cover-film-45cm-x-1m
Or perhaps print on to the back of some OHP film (reversed) and put a white layer underneath?

Self-adhesive library film?
www.staples.co.uk/bts-offers/bts-office-...cover-film-45cm-x-1m

That looks like the best bet so far, you could actually wrap it under the keypad before sticking it down to the box lid and it should protect the whole thing.

Then it won't matter what paper and printing method you use, within reason

ArcEye wrote: I did create many more pins and try to display much more system data originally, but found that the poor little arduino just could not cope.

Hi ArcEye,

I have to say that I am surprised by the limitations you have encountered. I have always found the arduino to be surprisingly powerful for what it is but sometimes the software libraries leave quite a bit to be desired.
What speed are you running the i2c bus at? The default is (or used to be) 100khz which is quite slow when you are trying to transfer any amount of data to the screen and could well account for much of the lag you have encountered. You can increase the bus speed to 400khz by changing a line in the Wire class (see this post )
The other thing I was wondering; I see that you are running the serial at 9600. Is there any reason this cannot be increased?

regards

Hi

Miselph wrote: You can increase the bus speed to 400khz by changing a line in the Wire class (see this post )

Thats interesting, thanks I will try that when I get the chance.

The other thing I was wondering; I see that you are running the serial at 9600. Is there any reason this cannot be increased?

In theory yes, but I had read a lot of reports of problems using the SoftwareSerial libraries above 9600.

I have not tried increasing the BAUD rate, because it wasn't the delivery of the packets that caused problems rather the display of the info therein.
If the i2c bus speed change has a dramatic effect, that could be worth doing

regards

ArcEye wrote: In theory yes, but I had read a lot of reports of problems using the SoftwareSerial libraries above 9600.

I am running serial at 1Mb out of my Arduino into a Mesa soft-UART,