December 27, 2012 – anderswallin.net

Dual-needle pyVCP meter

By popular demand, a quick hack that modifies the pyVCP meter widget to have two independent needles. It's used inside the <meter> tag by specifying <halpin2>"my2ndpin"</halpin2> and hooking up something to that pin. If <halpin2> is not used meter works as before, showing only one needle.

There's an XML file for this test-panel, a short HAL-file that hooks up the pins, and a shell script to run it all here: pyvcp_dual-needle-test

The modifications to linuxcnc source required are in lib/python/pyvcp_widgets.py: 0002-dual-needle-meter-use-with-halpin2-meter2-halpin2.patch
NOTE: This is a quick hack to make it work - don't take my code/patch too seriously...

Thursday manual milling

I made this ca 78x48x31 mm mount for a Faraday Isolator (Model IO-7-633 Optics For Research, now sold by Thorlabs) from 50x50 Aluminium bar on the manual mill at work. It raises the isolator up from the table by 31 mm. The isolator is attached to the mount with two M6 screws, 28 mm apart. The cap-head screws are countersunk so they don't protrude from the bottom. This mount is clamped to the optical table using the 8x5 mm slots in the sides.