September ’23 Update (Patreon)

Hi Guys,

I’ve got loads of stuff to talk about this month. I have several cool projects in the works: wifi enabled official firmware, a squeezer mechanism, and a TCode hand controller device.

Those of you who have been following my recent posts will know that I have been going through a bit of a rough time recently for various reasons. One by one those problems seem to be resolving themselves, and I’ve been able to make some significant progress over the last couple of weeks. Early days, but I think we’re getting back to normal.

The first thing on my list is to add WiFi to the official firmware. I had been skeptical about the wireless side of things, but having implemented the WiFi I can see the appeal. It’s actually really simple to set up, and it will allow the easy use of these devices away from a PC. For example, SLR plan to be adding WiFi TCode to DeoVR in the very near future, so this will allow the direct control of a TCode device from something like an Oculus Quest 2 headset.

The official ESP32 firmware for SR6 and OSR2 is still back in the days of SR6 Alpha. It’s long overdue for an upgrade! I now already have an OSR2 that will work over a WiFi connection, so a lot of the work that needs to be done for this already has been done. However, what I care about is that I make sure that I provide a good implementation.

I have gone back to re-visit the code, taking the opportunity to give it all a good overhaul. I’m also very grateful to have the support of Eve, who has taken it upon herself to re-write a lot of the TCode code, which is the real under-the-hood engine for these devices. This should enable a lot of extra functionality in the future, whilst also making the code much simpler!

I have chosen to add support for an optional 0.96” OLED screen to the ESP32 firmware. The main purpose of this will be to help with the WiFi connectivity, though it will have some other functions. I will of course be releasing the plastic parts to support these where they don’t already exist.

The next thing thing that I’m working on is a new modular upgrade for OSR2, SR6, and ultimately SSR1, which is a squeezer mechanism. Those of you who are my patrons will have seen the recent video that I put out on this. In short, I have finally found a mechanism that I believe is safe enough to release as a design. I have built a proof of concept mechanism, so my next step is to develop it into a design for release!

Last, but not least, I have been working on a hand controller joystick for TCode devices on-and-off for a few months now. The joystick uses capacitive sensing to control stroking up and down its shaft. It also uses an IMU (gyros and accelerometers) to measure tilt, so pitch roll and twist can also be controlled. It’s really very impressive!

I find this project an interesting prospect because I expect my patrons to be far more interested in building the stroker robots than a controller device. Nonetheless there is a strong interest from certain quarters so I am pressing ahead with the intention to release homebuild plans for this device. Soritesparadox in particular has indicated that a number of them may find their way into the hands of Ayva Remote service providers, which sounds like fun!

So all of the above will be coming out in the form of releases for the Maker ($8) tier over the coming weeks and months. It will be as and when, as am not yet ready to re-commit myself to monthly releases, but I should be able to get all three of these done this side of Christmas.

Supporter ($2) tier patrons will of course have been getting the update and livestream videos. I don’t yet have a date for a livestream this month, but I have already done one impromptu livestream so far. The best thing to do is to get yourself on the discord server and keep an eye open.

Benefactors ($16 tier) I am aware I am way behind again on the newsletter. This has been another casualty of what I’ve been going through recently. I am going to make an effort to get caught up on this soon! In the meantime the good news is that I’m definitely posting a lot more in the dev stream recently on discord these days, so keep an eye on there for up-to-date progress on the projects I have talked about above.

This year has probably been the most difficult time for me since I started out down this road as an online creator. Rest assured though that I’m still here, I’m still creating, and I’m not going anywhere.

If anything I think this is a really exciting time, not least because a lot of the tech that I and others from this community have created is becoming more and more mainstream. There seem to be more and more ways to have fun with this stuff all the time these days!

Thanks for your support guys!

Tempest