Code Contributions to the software

[thereza]

I've been working on some enhancements to the software - notably autocalibration of the optical system and auto-slack measurement. I'm looking at adding template based pattern matching next. Wondering if you are looking for the contributions to be added to the main software or if I should fork a version with my enhancements?

-Reza

[RinusDamen]

hello Reza,

Interesting! I am very curious what you've created, can you share a (youtube) video? thanks in advance.

Rinus

[JuKu]

Contributions are very welcome! It is up to you how to give them. A merge request in Github is the complicated way, sending subroutine codes will also certainly get my attention.

[thereza]

Alas, there are also UI changes that I think would be difficult to send - i've not used github much but happy to push the code that way or just provide you with a 'diff' if that's easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9P-VbbsFKQ

Added calib button, it works using the homing (or any) point. Will calc the x/y box values and give you a measure of the slack in the system. If you enable the built-in slack compensation it's about a 10x improvement in the amount of measured slack. I was hoping to implement intelligent slack compensation based on the measured slack values but I fear that the lack values might vary depending on where on the bed the head is.

The instructions said that the upward and downward cameras don't have to point at each other, but I set it up that way -only to later realize that you shouldn't do that because you need a place for the homing dot. I had to tape a piece of paper over the upward camera to place that dot, hence that's what you see.

Reza

[mrandt]

Hi Reeza,

this looks great!

As I did not have a precision ruler, I did something similar manually - jig the camera over a mark, note coordinates, jig until mark is at the image box, calculate width.

It would be great to have the software perform this automatically and I cannot wait until it is part of the official main branch

Contributing code to GitHub seems strange for users of CVS or SVN, but it is actually not very difficult:

1. If you have not done so, I recommend you install GitHub client for Windows: https://windows.github.com/
2. Clone code into your local environment, easiest way: Open LitePlacer GitHub website, click "Clone in Desktop" button -> brings up client software and creates your working copy
3. Incorporate any changes locally
4. Create a branch to commit your changes to. In GitHub client there is a dropdown above the "History" column, that is the branch selector - just click it and type a non-existing name to create a new branch, e.g. "autocalibrate"
5. Commit your local changes to the newly created branch - if there are any local changes, these are detected by GitHub client and it nicely displays the dialogs to commit those to your branch - pretty much self-explanatory.
6. Publish the branch to the server by clicking the "Publish" button at the top right. Once you did this, the change becomes public and others - me for example - may download and use your code.
7. Finally create a pull request. This tells Juha that you want him to review your code changes and merge them into the main branch if he finds them to be acceptable. There is again a button at the top-right to do so.

Voilá - done. While this procedure seems a bit confusing at first, I believe that forcing everyone to create their own branch and merge the changes later works great for diverse and distributed teams and greatly adds to code consistency and quality.

Any questions, let me know.

Thanks and best regards
Malte

[thereza]

thanks for the help - no way would i have been able to figure that out.

so everything worked except it said 'failed to publish'

?

[thereza]

I threw a binary here so you can play with it in the meantime

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ic2jtr1qi3is ... 4UJla?dl=0

[thereza]

Ended up forking it and putting code here.

https://github.com/thethereza/LitePlacer

How can i merge changes from the main thread back into mine or visa-versa?

[Lars]

You just need to create a pull request on github. There are quite a few tutorials for that on github.com.

[RinusDamen]

I've taken the files of thereza from Github, how can I install it?
I've also used the alternative download link, it gives me an installer, but no liteplacer software, is that correct?

@thereza: you might want to consider changing the youtube name to liteplacer in stead of lightplacer, this might help other users to find it.

thanks for your help, your code really looks promising