I want a MakerBot

Ever since I saw a MakerBot, I’ve wanted one. This isn’t just a passing lust for a new gadget though, I’ve got a lot of history of loving CNC machines and other automated building gadgets. First things first though, if you don’t know what a MakerBot is, I’ll let the creator explain the awesomeness to you:

Pretty awesome right? Just looking around at my house now I can count 10 things that I need to fix, or create with the ABS plastic that the MakerBot uses.

Now for a bit of history: Years ago, before I was even aware of the MakerBot (Perhaps it didn’t even exist back then) I learned a lot about CNC machines. In the cabinetry world, they are used a lot to build cabinets from. All of your panel cuts can be done on these very quickly, speeding production, and cutting costs. One day, I was reading Instructables and I came across directions to build a home made CNC machine.

I bought the electronics kit from HobbyCNC, soldered the board together, and then started construcing the actual gantry CNC machine from the plans online. The plans were good, but the wood parts were so interlocked together that you basically needed a CNC machine to build this one. Since I didn’t have one, I printed out all the shapes, glued them to MDF, and spent the better part of a day with a bandsaw cutting the parts out. I assembled the machine, hooked it up to the computer and got it to work.

“Work” might be a grandiose term for what I had, while it did cut wood, it was horribly out of square, and had to have more drywall screws shot into it after each cut as the machine was falling apart.

I set about to build a new machine, one that was easy to create. I had basic shop tools, a table saw and a drill press. I thought to myself, “Table saws are great at rectangles, so why can’t I build a machine out of only rectangles?”. I did just that. I designed the machine in Sketchup, using only rectangles with holes drilled in them. I connected everything together using store bought furniture connectors. Here are the results: (You can download my Sketchup model here)

So now I can take my 2D Sketchup models and “print” them out in wood!

As cool as this machine is, it only cuts 2D parts out of wood. I’ve had a blast using it over the years to make all kinds of parts.

I think it’s time to move up to the world of 3D printing. The MakerBot allows you to build plastic extrusions out of ABS plastic using STL files. Sketchup has an STL exporter available for it (I actually have used that on my CNC machine before). I’d LOVE to be able to make some of my models on the MakerBot…

I honestly think that home 3D printing is going to be a big part of our future. Imagine being able to buy a product and “print it out” at home. I actually talk about this a lot when I am doing presentations on technology.

I am just going to come right out and say this:

I want a MakerBot

(So guys, if you want to send me a review unit, I’d be more then happy to give you TONS of coverage!)

Contact me here!

KBTribe Chat “Leveraging Technology”

Twitter is always alive with brilliant conversation if you know where to look. If you’re in the Kitchen & Bath Industry, it sometimes can be hard to find those great conversations on Twitter. Thankfully, instead of sorting through billions of tweets, Twitter users in the K&B space come together each week for lively, like minded conversations in the form of a Twitter chat.

You can see all the details on KBTribe chat here.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to host this week. My topic was “Leveraging Technology”

I feel that the kitchen & bath industry is really lagging behind in technology. In fact, I did an hour and a half talk about this to a buying group in Atlanta just last week. While this industry is lagging behind, designers are really interested in technology and want to use it! Here are the five questions that we discussed during the chat:

What’s your favorite “app” that you use for work on your smartphone or tablet?
If you could have any type of app invented for your smartphone or tablet, what would it be?
Do think your manufacturers are doing well in providing you with the tech you need? (Apps, good websites, spec books, etc)
Do you store anything on the “cloud”? If so, what and how?
What software are you using to create drawings? Do you like it?

There were some really interesting responses to these questions, and I learned some things that I didn’t know before.

One of the biggest opportunities for vendors and manufacturers is digitizing their data. People don’t want paper spec books anymore, they want instant access to data on all devices. There was certainly a lively discussion about that.

For the full transcript, click here.

Again I would like thank the folks over at KBTribe chat for generously offering me the hosting gig for a day!

iPhone recording studio

So do you need more proof that mobile devices are becoming more powerful by the minute?

I just learned of a band, One Like Son, that has recorded it’s entire album on an iPhone. You read that right, using adaptors for their instruments and a few apps on the iPhone, this band has skipped using a recording studio and produced an excellent sounding album on nothing more then an iPhone.

Being a wannabe rockstar myself, I have toyed around with Garage Band on my iPad, and even recorded a few things. I have never heard of an entire album being recorded this way though. If I hadn’t told you it was recorded on an iPhone you’d never know.

Listen here!

Android 5.0 Jelly Bean Rumor Explained

There have been some rumors going around about Google’s newest sugary software upgrade for mobile devices: Android 5.0 “Jelly Bean”. I’d like to address those here with a healthy dose of common sense.

The tech press loves a good rumor, and admittedly so do I, but I think this one is just off base. Allow me to explain with a little background:

When Android came out, it was meant just for phones, and it’s worked quite well for that. As time went on, Apple bestowed on us the iPad. Manufactures scrambled like Wal Mart shoppers for a $40 dollar DVD player on Black Friday to put out a tablet. One of the first Android tablets that made it market was the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7″. This tablet ran Android Gingerbread. Google cautioned that Gingerbread (Android 2.3) was not meant for tablets, but they were cooking up something that work.

Some time later they released Android 3.0, or more commonly known as Honeycomb. Honeycomb was meant only for tablets. Motorola came out with the first Honeycomb tablet, and lets just say it didn’t sell so well. Why? Because there were only a handful of apps for it, and a lot of the Android 2.0 apps didn’t look right on it, or didn’t work at all.

I am not going to even go into all the Android “fragmentation” talk that came up around this release. Let’s look at if from a developers standpoint: At this stage in the game, you’ve got Android phones which are very popular, so it makes sense to make an app for them. But why would you want to develop for a tablet OS that has near zero market penetration? This is why Android tablets don’t sell.

So how was Apple able to launch a tablet with a plethora
of apps? They made it easy for developers. First off, all iPhone apps could run on an iPad, albeit a little pixelated. But, Apple also made it easy for developers to convert their apps into “Universal binaries”. In other words, with very little modification, you could turn your iPhone app into a sweet iPad app.

Apps sell devices. Apple capitalized on this theory,
and in the process, took most of the market share.

Google got smart and released Android 4.0, or Ice Cream Sandwich. This is a unified operating system. In other words, you can write one app, and deploy it everywhere.

Google’s got a problem: They can’t upgrade every phone and device out there because they don’t control the hardware development. They rely on other manufacturers and operators to push updates. While they can make it as easy as possible to update, they have to sit and wait for ICS to get a big install base.

Do you remember how long it took Gingerbread to get a big install base? A lot longer then iOS 5.0 took to get out there.

So developers STILL have to develop for two, and now THREE OS’s to stay current on Android phones and tablets.

Now, to address the rumor about Android 5.0

Google’s not stupid. They know that developers and apps sell hardware. More hardware sold means more revenue for Google. They know of the fragmentation issue that faces developers and they are working hard to fix that with Android 4.0. They’d be stupid, just plain stupid to release, or even talk about Android 5.0 now when 4.0 still has about 1% penetration.

While it’s a tempting to dream about how awesome 5.0 is going to be, we just aren’t going to see it for a long time.

So tech press, unless you’ve got something substantial, like a leaked ROM or a screenshot, let’s just stop talking about it and focus on real news and getting more copies of Ice Cream Sandwich out there.

Maide: MultiTouch for Sketchup via iPad

So just the other day I stumbled across this app for the iPad: Maide Control for Sketchup. Basically, what this does is turn your iPad into a giant multi touch controller for Sketchup. I have been playing around with it for a few days and so far it’s pretty handy. I have yet to really use it on a hardcore modeling project, I have just been toying around with it.

The app is very well done, and setup is really easy. As you may know, I am a big fan of the 3D Connexion Space Explorer. However, as great as the Space Explorer is, it’s not exactly portable. Maide allows you to make a great accessory for Sketchup out of something that you’re probably already carrying around. Check out this video to see what it’s all about. Maide works on both Mac and PC. If you end up trying it out for yourself, let us know how it goes in the comments.

I’m Eric, and I used to be addicted…

…to USB flash drives.

That’s right. What you are seeing here is just the tip of the iceberg. I had lots of these drives in circulation. I have several different computers that I work on, all in different places. I was constantly transferring pictures, documents, and files between all of them. On my best days I could keep track of what was where. When the caffeine wore off, all bets were off.

I tend to stay ahead of the curve and keep up with the latest technology. I tried all kinds of ways to keep my files in sync. I used to email files to myself, remote desktop into my “base” PC, I even have used cloud file strorage service like DropBox. As brilliant as DropBox is, in the back of my mind I always wanted something that could do more.

I wanted something that I could clip websites to, write down notes, record sound, and take pictures with my smartphone. I wanted all of this on one place, accessible anywhere. I wanted to be able to search those notes, by text, location, and keywords. I wanted to be able to access these notes from anything that was connected to the internet. I wanted to be able to share those notes with anyone easily. Well, for a long time I didn’t think such a service existed until I discovered Evernote.

Evernote is the most brilliant app I have discovered this year. It has changed the way that I work. Evernote at it’s heart is a cloud based storage service. You can create typed notes, store documents, pictures, files, and even recorded audio to the cloud. What can you use to create these notes? Damn near anything. They support all kinds of mobile devices (even Blackberry!), Mac’s, PC’s, even the web browser. Let me walk you through a typical day with Evernote:

I start out my day reading the news. Since a lot of my blog posts I write are about things in the news, I can with just a click or two, clip new articles into my Evernote. I have a special notebook just for these articles.

Later on, I may head to a jobsite and measure out a space with my iPad. There, I take the measurements with a drawing app, and I take pictures of the space. When I get back to the office I send all the pictures and notes to Evernote to a notebook labeled for that job. As I start designing the space with Sketchup, I export all the pictures to Evernote in that same job notebook. Later, I clip all the websites for appliances into the same notebook. I can even walk around the showroom taking pictures of hardware with my smartphone to add to the notebook. Now I’ve got all of my notes for a job in Evernote, accessible instantly from any device I choose, anywhere on the planet. Say I end up talking to the client on the phone and I am away from my computer, I can just open the Evernote app and look up all the information for the job.

Evernote has one more ace up it’s sleeve: it can recognize text from pictures. Think about this, you can snap a picture of a business card and put it in Evernote. Evernote can read the text in the picture and make it searchable. I was over the moon when I discovered this. I started using it for business cards, but now I use it for spec books and all kinds of other text.

Boarding passes end up in there, parking tickets, handwritten notes, you name it! I could go on and on…

Here’s what I suggest, go to Evernote.com and get this app. It’s free unless you are a total upload glutton like me, and then it’s $5 per month, or $45 per year for an astronomical amount of storage space. This app has literally changed the way I work. (Nope, they didn’t pay me a dime to say that either)

Steve Jobs has passed away

I just got a text a little while ago from my sister, it read “Steve Jobs died, look at the news”

I didn’t believe her. I checked Google News, and Twitter. There were only a few posts on Twitter, and one half-posted news article. I thought it was all fake, then I went to Apple.com and saw this:

Then something very odd happened to me, I got a little upset. We’ve had a lot of celebrity deaths in the past few years, Michael Jackson, and Patrick Swayze to name a few. Not that I take their deaths with a grain of salt, but I never really got upset over these deaths. I just wasn’t emotionally attached to these other stars in the way that I just realized I was attached to Steve Jobs. I don’t even know the hit movies in the theater, the latest tv show, and I don’t even watch live sports. I have referred to Apple product launches as “My Super Bowl” on several occasions as my friends will attest. Steve Jobs has even gotten me to go off on several angry rants on this blog.

My father died of cancer several years ago. He was an incredibly smart guy who worked harder then any other person I have ever met. He would stop at nothing to get through the next hurdle or solve a problem to get ahead. My father’s tireless work ethic made him very successful, and someone who I wish was still here that I could look to for advice and guidance on my own endeavors. In the days before my father passed away, he was still working. Judging by the little time that has passed since Steve Jobs resignation, and the time he died, he and my father may have shared a very similar work ethic.

Perhaps I never let myself realize this before, but my admiration of Steve Jobs and what he has accomplished in his short life, for me runs deeper the latest iPad or MacBook, it’s his tireless dedication in creating one of the most amazing companies on the planet.

Steve, you’ve left behind a wonderful legacy that will inspire people for generations to come. You’ve certainly inspired me.

What the bleep? (Kitchen Tech Part 3)

Would you store your food in green goo? How about something that charges your cell phone with no wires? Is it the future? Some of it is, some of it you can buy right now… This post could be originally seen on Design Kula.

Electrolux Biorobot food storage device: Ok, at first glance this thing looks gross. Would you be OK with putting your food in green goo to keep it fresh? That concept might take some getting used to, but a few years ago we never thought we’d be using our phones as computers either. The idea behind this concept refrigerator is that you stick your food in the green goo, it forms pods around it, and by using the light in the room the goo stays cool and germ free. Also, since your food is separate from other items, there is no odor transfer. Interestingly, Sub Zero utilizes this same concept in their refrigerators with multiple cooling zones driven by multiple compressors. This keeps odors from moving from one area to another so your food stays fresher longer. If this goo concept were ever to come to market, there would be so many uses for it. Imagine instead of one giant food cooling area, you could have multiple “goo units” that store food at the point of use. Your wet bar could have a small area for fruit, and a main area for beverages. This could also be great in restaurant use as well.

Inductive Charging Mats: How many kitchens have you walked into that have cell phone, ipod, and game system chargers all over the countertops? We’ve got so many things that we need to recharge these days, and a lot of that goes on in the kitchen. If you’re clever, you can create a nice charging station to manage all those wires. But why manage the present when you could bring your kitchen into the future? How about wireless charging? Powermat, and Energizer make these great mats that can charge your devices by just dropping them on the mat. No wires needed. Older devices will need to have an adapter slipped onto the battery, but a lot of new cell phones are coming with inductive charging built in. Check out this video to see it in action, it’s F***ing awesome!

There is a lot of great kitchen technology out there, and this list doesn’t even scratch the surface. Consumers see more of this technology, they want it integrated into their designs. It makes sense, if they can have all this powerful technology at their desks, why should one’s kitchen be in the stone age?

Kitchen Technology, Part 1

This post originally appeared on Design Kula. This is a fabulous blog and I suggest you check it out.

Technology: It’s everywhere these days. It’s evolving at a blistering pace. We all know how it goes, that shiny new aluminium tablet you bought two months ago is already out of date, replaced by something that is twice as fast, and half the price! That’s not just all marketing hype, there is a law, Moores Law. Moore’s law talks about the amount of transistors on a chip doubling…. Ok, I’ll forgo the technical jargon before you jump to your Facebook page. Basically the law says that computers will get twice as fast and half the price each year. This has been true for the last 50 or so years!

So how has this affected the kitchen in today’s market? Well, there is TONS of tech out there for the kitchen. Some of it good, some bad, and some just plain odd. I’ll guide you through just some of the things I have discovered in my travels. Before we start, I think I need to get some geek credentials out of the way:

My name is Eric Schimelpfenig, AKBD. I am a kitchen and bath designer, Sketchup modeler, trainer, public speaker, blogger, and a firm believer that the Internet is here to stay. At an early age I assembled my own computer in a cardboard box, and today I have no less then three screens on my desk at any given time. I could keep going, but I think you get the picture…

First up: The AlessiTAB. This tablet is a touch screen tablet that was developed for use exclusively in the kitchen. It runs on that all familiar Android operating system, and even features a TV tuner! I think it’s a great idea, but it’s going to be a dismal failure. Since it’s got all the tablet specs, it’s got the tablet price, without the tablet portability. The idea of having a computer or tablet in the kitchen is something a lot consumers want. With so many great apps out there for the kitchen why not get an iPad Chef Sleeve or just in put it a Zip Lock bag? (Yes, that actually works really well!)

Outdoor grilling, it’s one of the great outdoor pastimes. Imagine this: You are outside on your deck, you’re surrounded by friends, great smelling food, and wonderful weather. What could possibly make this day any better? Being able to leave all that and go hide inside. But how can you go inside to play another round of Angry Birds or check your Match.com inbox without the risk of burning your delicious meats? You can’t trust your friends, but you can trust iGrill. iGrill is a remote meat thermometer that communicates over Bluetooth to your favorite iOS device. Yup, you can look right at your iPhone or iPad and see the status of your meats without ever having to leave that computer chair. Frag on oh “master of the meats”.

Stay tuned to this spot towards the end of the week and I will unveil even more exciting (and actually useful) kitchen tech!

OSX Lion: Should you upgrade?

I love upgrades. I am usually the first one to get a new operating system, an app update, or the latest beta version of a software. Half of the software that I run on my various devices is in beta. I love being on the cutting edge. Sometimes this means you get the latest features, and sometimes you get some broken stuff.

Apple on Wednesday released “Lion” the latest and greatest update to what it calls “The best OS we’ve ever made”. I’ve checked out the reviews, watched the videos, and I think it looks fabulous. Take a look for yourself:

With every major upgrade, there is the potential for stuff to get broken. I almost updated right away, and then I thought I should do a little research. A few Google searches later and I came up to this post by a Google employee on the Sketchup help forum:

On behalf of the SketchUp team, I want to give everybody a heads-up that we’ve encountered a few issues using SketchUp on the new Mac Lion OS. You can check them out below (along with suggested workarounds); we are working on improving/fixing these — thanks in advance for replying here with any other issues you find using SketchUp on the new Mac OS!

Issue: SU freezes when generating scene thumbnails for models with background images (ie, those with Match Photo scenes).
Workaround: Keep the Scenes dialog box closed when working with models with background images.

Issue: In a model with 1 match photo scene, the camera is no longer synced back to the scene when clicking on the scene.
Workaround: Add a second scene via some method other than using the Scenes dialog – e.g. right click on the Scene tab and select “Add”. Adding a scene via the Scenes dialog is not possible given the first issue.

Issue: When trying to login to the 3D Warehouse from within SketchUp, you see the message “Service not available. Try again later”.
Workaround: You can still login to the 3D Warehouse outside of SketchUp by going directly to the site: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/ From there, it is possible to then upload KMZ files which means you need to export your SketchUp model to the KMZ format before uploading.

Issue: When selecting a region using the “Photo Textures” dialog, only one pin is visible which makes it hard to accurately grab a photo texture. You can still grab photo textures – it is just that grabbing the exact region you want is now more difficult as you can’t see all the pins.

Workaround: By left clicking on the photo region and moving the mouse, you can somewhat manipulate the region you want to capture.

Issue: With the new Lion OSX, there is a new Mouse option (“Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”) which is checked by default. When this option is checked, scrolling forward with the mouse wheel causes the SU model to zoom out and scrolling backwards causes the model to zoom in.
Workaround: In Lion, go to System Preferences > Mouse and uncheck “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”. Note: in a future release, unchecking this option should no longer be necessary.

Issue: Stacked Snappy dialogs can now break apart after resizing one of the dialogs in the stack.
Workaround: Re-snap the dialogs together if they break apart after a resize.

Issue: With Lion, SketchUp now remembers whatever models you had open in a previous SketchUp session and, on re-launch, opens those same models. This means that models can now show up behind the Welcome dialog, which is a change of behavior. It may also mean that SketchUp can take longer to launch and may potentially re-open a problem model from a previous session.
Workaround: Close your models prior to exiting SketchUp if you do not like this behavior.

So, I suppose not an entirely bad list, but there are a few alarming ones in there, particularly with the 3D warehouse. No official word from Google on when we will see some updates. So those out there itching to upgrade, you probably should let Snow Leopard purr a little longer. Have you upgraded? Tell us your experience in the comments!

Here is the link to the post on the Sketchup help forum.