Paul Beltrani - Pie in the rain

Pie in the rain

Paul Beltrani

Vagrant Boxes from official Ubuntu Cloud Images

At some point Ubuntu stopped providing official, Vagrant Box images on their cloud image repository. Fortunately, they still provide official Virtual Box images. With a few easy steps, it's a simple matter to convert these to Vagrant Box images. All we need to do is: 1. Retrieve the

Brief intro to AWS IMDSv2

In a recent post I mentioned the AWS Instance Metadata Service (IMDS). It's the magic URL that allows an EC2 instance to retrieve all sorts of information related to itself including any temporary/on-demand credentials it may be entitled to. See the AWS docs to Work with instance

EC2 and Docker access to AWS services without embedded credentials

This post covers how to grant access from EC2 instances and docker containers on EC2 instances to other AWS services without the need for embedded credentials. It uses access to ECR as an example but the process is the same for access to any AWS service, e.g. ECS, S3

Using a private AWS ECR repository with GitLab CI/CD build runners

We maintain our own EC2 based GitLab Runners to support our container based CI/CD builds. It's not efficient to modify a public image for every build step and it's not polite to the services we hit for those packages. Our solution is to generate container

BigTreeTech SKR Mini v3.0 Fans and Firmware

I recently replaced the stock controller board in my Creality Ender-3 [https://www.creality.com/products/ender-3-3d-printer] with the BigTreeTech SKR MINI E3 V3.0 [https://biqu.equipment/products/bigtreetech-skr-mini-e3-v2-0-32-bit-control-board-for-ender-3] board. The SKR Mini E3 uses the TMC2209 stepper motor driver chip [https://www.trinamic.com/products/integrated-circuits/details/tmc2209-la/

Docker, seamless access to AWS ECR

Accessing the AWS ECR with docker commands requires authentication. One mechanism to accomplish this is to do a docker login at regular intervals, e.g. aws --profile DeployECR ecr get-login-password | docker login --username AWS --password-stdin 496266697631.dkr.ecr.us-east-2.amazonaws.com Another is to use the Credential Helper mechanism in

Installing the iwlwifi driver on a Jetson Nano Dev Kit

I had an extra Intel AC 9260 [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/99445/intel-wirelessac-9260/specifications.html] wireless module and decided it should be simple matter to plug it into my Jetson Nano Developer Kit [https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-nano-developer-kit] to enable WiFi connectivity. A

Building a custom Jetson Nano kernel to enable module support

I recently tried to install an Intel AC 9260 [https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/99445/intel-wirelessac-9260/specifications.html] wireless card into a Jetson nano developer kit [https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/jetson-nano-developer-kit]. Unfortunately, NVIDIA has what appears to be a well deserved reputation of terrible

PGP/GPG, setting up your keys

Root and subkeys Your private key is your electronic identity. It's what you use to sign messages you send or decrypt messages which are interned only for you. If you lose this key you won't be able to do either. What's worse, if someone

PGP/GPG, a short introduction

The tl;dr to public key encryption. The concept is fairly simple. Imagine you own a lock that uses two keys which we'll call A and B. These two keys compliment each other. Whatever operation you do with one requires the other to undo it. For example, if

Building and Installing grbl from source

Building grbl from source on Linux There are three basic steps * Install the necessary OS level packages * Get the grbl source * If necessary patch the grbl source, e.g. to work with LaserAxe controller * Build grbl It should go without saying you don't need to patch the grbl

CNC tool chain for PCBs, FlatCAM - Part 2 of 3

FlatCAM [http://flatcam.org/] turns the Image and Drill files created by our CAD program, KiCad, into G-Code which is used to control the mill. This the trickiest part of the process. What you do here determines how the mill moves. It's important to have an understanding of

CNC Mill - Laser Mounting Plate

The CNC Mill / Laser cutter kit I purchased allows for two methods to mount the laser. The first is to simply replace the spindle motor with the laser module. This works well and allows you to use the laser across the full range of the X and Y axis. It&

Tinted plastic != LASER safety goggles

I recently bought a desktop CNC Mill / Laser cutter kit. The kit came with "everything you need" to get started including a pair of safety goggles. The whole kit, with shipping from China to the US was slightly less than $300. As you would expect, costs were kept

CNC tool chain for PCBs - Part 1 of 3

Per a previous post [https://beltrani.com/inexpensive-desktop-cnc-mill-lasercutter/], I purchased an inexpensive desktop mill for the primary purpose of milling PCBs. While it came with everything necessary on the hardware side, it's mostly left to the user to determine how to drive it. For those following a similar

Inexpensive Desktop CNC Mill & Lasercutter

The Electronics and Robotics shop (E&R) at Artisan's Asylum [https://artisansasylum.com/] has one of the original Othermills from the Other Machine Co. "Original" as in back when it was still a Kickstarter project [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/otherfab/the-othermill-custom-circuits-at-your-fingertips] . I had been