Preparing Laptops, Lab Computers and Notebook's.

Posted by Vishnu Easwaran on October 20, 2015

We started with Francisco teaching us how to keep track of the project using technique of writing down notes on a book dedicated for the same. Things we need to note are

  • Date
  • Machine used
  • Material (thickness, type, color…)
  • Settings (speeds, feed rates...)
  • Results (what worked, what didn’t)
  • Debugging
  • Assignment: Document what you do every day.

Franc explained about the FOSS softwares and the philosophy, the ones which are used at MIT and the necessity of us using them. Almost all the machines are run using LInux in FabLab.
Then we started installing Ubuntu in the laptop's/PC’s which didn't have it. Updated the system and added some necessary softwares. Learned about the “Software Centre” in Ubuntu, how to use it to install softwares. Learned how to use”apt-get” to install softwares from terminal. We also learned how to compile code to install a software.
As some of the machines have only Windows software, we installed wine for running them inside Linux.
Learned some command line instructions like pwd, mkdir, ls, cd, etc.

Assignment for today:


To install the following list of softwares.
  • “Terminal here” addon for Nautilus
  • fab modules compiled version
    • Instructions in kokompe web site http://kokompe.cba.mit.edu/
  • kokopelli retro (editing Neil’s circuit boards)
    • Install dependencies from kokompe web site http://kokompe.cba.mit.edu/
    • Unzip the folder
    • Open folder in terminal
    • make fab
    • cd bin
    • ./kokopelli -r
  • antimony ( Problem faced - It did not compile correctly for the first 4 tries. I had to delete the entire cloned folder, re-clone it and build again. After some tries it got installed.)
  • inkscape
  • openscad
  • gimp
  • cura
  • arduino IDE (not the ubuntu software center version)
  • attiny addon for arduino IDE
  • processing
  • qcad
  • git
  • eagle
  • kicad
  • wine
  • partworks in wine
  • Text editor of your choice