This is my tribute to all the truckers who stood up for our rights in the Freedom Convoy 2022.
Freedom Convoy 2022
Carved into a piece of laminated maple 14 inches by 7.5 inches. Pocket cut is about 265mm x 160 mm and was done using a 1/8 inch single flute downcut endmill. The detail cut was done using a 1 mm endmill.
Two coats of polyurethane were applied then the truck detail was painted with a black acrylic while the maple leaf was painted red. After sanding, a couple more coats of poly finished the job.
A while back, I posted about my new Raspberry Pi 400. I was so impressed with what this all-in-one single-board computer could do, that I wanted to explore other options.
Raspberry Pi’s are available in a number of flavours from the Pi 4B, Pi 400, Pi 3B+, Pi Zero 2W and even the miniscule Pi Pico. That is, if you can find a retailer with one in stock. They can be hard to find in these days of chip shortages and supply chain stress.
The Pi4B is the latest from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It comes with either 2Gb, 4Gb and 8 Gb of RAM. I was able to get a kit with a Pi4B with 4Gb from PiShop.ca so it is functionally the same as my Pi400.
The kit included a case, a power supply, an HDMI cable and some heat syncs. I wanted a cooling fan too, so I ordered one of those separately.
HighPi Fan
The case that came with my kit wasn’t configured for a fan, so I had to do a bit of customization. I measured the fan diameter and used my CNC machine to cut an opening in the case lid to match. I also CNC drilled 4 holes for the mounting screws.
The fan is a 5V DC PWM fan, which means it can be controlled via software. The red wire is connected to one of the Pi’s GPIO 5V pins. The black wire to a Ground pin and the blue wire to GPIO Pin-14. That pin can be used to control the fan. I set my fan to come on when the CPU temperature reaches 60 Deg C. It then runs until the CPU temp drops to 50 Deg and then shuts off.
So far, I have been using the Pi4B as a desktop computer, connected to my LG monitor – the HDMI image is beautiful. I’ve been using Chrome and Firefox to surf the interwebs, and open-source programs like LibreOffice for word processing, spreadsheets and presentation, and GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program photo editing software. I’m used to Photoshop, but GIMP looks like a great alternative.
I have set up CNCjs so I can use the Pi4B to control my CNC machine.
I have also installed Filezilla so I can transfer files via FTP or SFTP to the websites I manage or to other computers on my network.
I will probably eventually set up this Pi4B as a NAS – Network Accessible Storage, but I need to learn more about that. I currently have 2 drives attached to the Pi4B, a 2 Tb and a 200 Gb HDD that I salvaged out of an old laptop. So using this as an NAS makes sense.
A friend sent me an image of a charcuterie board someone had made with an image of a menacing looking shark and the words
Shark Coochie Board
Because no one can say char-cu-te-rie
Shark Coochie board
I couldn’t find the same shark image, but I did find one that looked a bit more friendly. I imported the image into Carbide Create then added the text. Next I created toolpaths for a 90 degree V-bit.
I had a nice maple cutting board on hand so I set up my CNC machine and carved it. I think it came out OK, but if I do another one, I will make the carving a bit bigger so that it is at least 80% of the width of the board.
Just as a footnote, this post marks a number of firsts for me. After taking the images above with my phone, I used an FTP app to transfer them wirelessly to my new Raspberry Pi 4B. I then edited them using GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. And finally, this post was made using the Pi 4B.
