Linux, Personal

New uConsole Back Plate

Received my newly designed back plate printed by JCL3DP. This time, i tried a new nylon material, and i am pleased. The PA12 -HP Nylon (MJF) has 175C temperature resistance and has so much more structural integrity, and surely stiffer. It feels great and the finish is smoother.

At 3mm thickness, the new backplate is stiffer and feels strong. Not as flimsy as 3201PA-F (SJS). The 3201PA-F also has a lower temperature deformity limit at 145C.

This newer back plate uses 3mm thickness around the borders to provide more strength/stiffness but is thinner at other areas down to about 2mm. i think for strength, 3mm is the right about. 2mm starts to feel a little flexi. But otherwise it still feels great.

The new STL file is posted at Thingiverse. Further notes are also available there.

The back plate works great with NVME board, Active cooling and AIOv2 board. I did drill a small hole (2mm) so that i can see the NVME light come through. The fan covers are also really neat. i took a bet and sent it for print without first prototyping in PLA. For its price, it turned out great.

How much did this cost? the back plate was US$4 and the fan covers were $0.50. Shipping was $1.50 but i had to wait 10 days.

Linux, Personal

Meshtastic Setup notes for uConsole

Finally managed to get some stability in using Meshtastic on the uConsole.

  1. Managed to get the GPS device to be available to Meshtasticd without having to shutdown GPSD. Updated write up below.
  2. Managed to get my Meshtastic node to join the local Singapore mesh network. Given that i can have Meshtasticd now running as a daemon most of the time, it finally makes sense to keep the node running and perhaps contribute to the density of the LoRa network here (?). The notes and learnings below. Mainly congestion optimisation.
Linux, Personal

GPS on Ubuntu

Mucked around GPS on Ubuntu mainly because of my uConsole.

Managed to learn something about getting that set up properly and brought that over between my desktop as well as uConsole device. Did a write up on the setup for it here.

Linux, Personal

uConsole Custom Designs

Made some mods to my hardware. The forums are a great resource over at clockworkPi.

As i am awaiting my hackergadgets kit for the new adapters meant for CM5, i made some hardware mods to accomodate the potential increase in heat. At the same time, also designed some casing improvements to my unit.

  1. Screen cover: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7206323 – ClockWorkPi Forum Post
  2. Back Plate and cover: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7197472 – ClockWorkPi Forum Post

Do note that i used PLA only to prototype. i have found that the heat deflection temperature of 58 degrees to be insufficient. So i ultimately printed at JCL3DP.com as it allowed me to pick materials such as Nylon which had a deflection temp of 158 degrees.

Printing the screen cover in transparent resin is also very cool. i can now peek at my screen without exposing my unit to dust.

Some pictures here to share.