Don't expect help from MakeBlock here

#21

Which is a big pity. The hardware is good but the rest…

#22

One of the things I speak to my students about is the need to select the right tool for the job. The Arduinos are great for interfacing/controlling sensors, motors, etc., but they are not good general purpose computers. Likewise, the Raspberry Pi, for example, is a nice little general purpose computer but it can be challenging to interface with sensors, etc. For the larger robotics projects, we are looking at the Raspberry Pi as being the “brain” that controls one or more Arduinos and let the Arduinos deal with the physical devices. The Raspberry Pi Zero opens a lot of new possibilities as well.

#23

It has just got a bit more difficult, I emailed the Pioneer @ makeblock, and it has bounced as undeliverable… GRR!

#24

@Pioneer is not with Makeblock any longer. Drop a note to cyndi@makeblock.cc or kevin@makeblock.cc. They are @Pioneer’s replacements. Also be aware that China is celebrating the Qingming festival (similar to the US Memorial Day), so people may be out of office until next week or the week after.

Is there a specific thing you are trying to find out about the software?

#25

Chuck,
Thank you for the suggested contacts, there are now four on this topic alone. I am not, at this point, confident that Cyndi and Kevin are necessarily the appropriate people to contact.

I was searching for answers regarding the problem with installing Benbox in the Laser Engraver Gcode topic. It became apparent that others had observed similar problems.

It became equally apparent that the topic was not attracting responses from Makeblock Technical Staff.
I initially contributed to this topic in response to others, in the naïve belief that the topics would be monitored. This appears not to be the case.

My next step, is to email customer services, ( tec and ntec) drawing attention to these topics; offering some personal feedback on my recent experience with the web-site, and also the subject of what, in my opinion, constitutes good customer service.

Hopefully, there will be a positive response.

#26

There are ways around that. Adafruit makes a excellent motor hat and most of my sensors use i2c.and the raspberry pi can use analog sensors with a digital to analog converter and you can use a i2c hardware PWM servo controller to handle all PWM things like motor speed control,Led’s and others.you just need to make sure to bring down the sensor input to 3.3v . a good way to have many I2c devices is to connect the sda and scl on the Raspberry Pi to a breadboard’s power rail and connect a external power source to the other power rail.then you can have over 20 I2c devices connected to the raspberry pi, and the ultrasonic sensor works well on the Pi as is.

#27

I would say that it really depends on what you’re doing. If I have to add on a ton of extra parts and a lot of extra code to achieve what I’m doing, I worry that I’m creating a project that will be a pain to extend/debug. That’s why I shoot for the simplest possible design for the hardware and software in my projects. However, your mileage may vary depending on what you’re doing. :slight_smile:

#28

I had planed on doing that way, I even have a Arduberry. and over a dozen Arduino’s of different models from a pro mini to a mega 2560 and all kind of shields. after doing some research I found out that the Raspberry Pi can do everything a Arduino can do and then some. And you always have to use extra parts even with the Arduino too, and I can build my own circuit boards to lessen the amount of connections to the Rasppberry Pi As for the extra code you will always have to use extra code, you have to program the Arduino and the raspberry Pi, and I don’ like the fact that everything an the Arduino runs in a loop. Like the Arduino the Raspberry Pi can use libraries to help you code less And for one of the main reasons is for the learning experience. I have over 3 years experience programming the Arduino, and built a bunch of Arduino robots,so what’s the challenge in that. But I have never built a totally Raspberry Pi robot and need to stretch my bounds.

#29

Tech support really sucks…got an email with a diagram attached saying check my wiring duhhh, on my dead xy plotter. All ready built one that works plus mspider and had checked the wiring dip switches etc. told tech support …response was nothing great makerblock will not be the first company to fail because of bad tech support!

#30

Hi was wrong lastI night Kevin from makeblock and his colleague contacted me,we had a video conference and fixed my plotter…

#31

that’s looking good

#32