Kinda funny how things have progressed...

I work with the Smoothieware project. The V1 Smoothieboard was one of the first with ethernet onboard (although kinda borked). First thing that was advised to everyone was "never connect this to anything outside your local network"

Nowadays...it seems that warning has been lost. Even in the face of firmware updates that caused physical damage.

Something to be said for building your own printer.

In my case PETG had issues until I realized that on my machine it needs to go slower.

I can print PLA at 100mm/s with .25mm layers...but PETG I don't go much over 65mm/s give the same line width/layer height.

Since getting things dialed in I switched to primarily printing PETG. Although, I have no issue printing PLA, PETG or ABS when needed.

That was my thought as well...I suppose there may be something I am not thinking of. Perhaps they get more total energy if they "perch" on the tower.

My gut says there's something like an inverse-square law that governs how far away they can effectively charge.

It’s exactly the inverse square law.

You get a million times more power if you can put a coil 1mm away from the wire than if you hover 1 meter away.

It's actually an inverse first power law, assuming that the distance of the drone from the wire is much less than the length of the wire. The inverse square law applies only to a point source of electrical energy, to a sphere, or to an object whose largest dimension is much less than the distance to the drone.

Yes, feels like perching via some insulated "feet" and only using energy for stabilisation (as opposed to flight) would allow the drone to get very cloe (and suck much more power) from the line.

It'll definitely charge faster, if only because it's drawing less power to stay up and getting closer. The only question is, is it like 10% or 100% faster?

Drones consume something like 100W to stay in the air (ballpark, of course), so they'd probably never charge if they had to hover.

No, but if there were something convenient for them to grab and hang from, like a power transmission line…

More like 190W / Kg.

I have an Eye-fi SD card which can send photos via wifi. Wouldn't be too hard to make a receiver that send from a raspi or something automatically.

Seems they are discontinued but there are other options that work similar such as "EZ Share"

Are they seeing tiny mice...or are they seeing the same 2cm tall "people"?

If you are a programmer OpenSCAD is likely for you. It certainly has benefits in things that are repeating patterns (gears and such)...and if your mind is good at visualizing things in "code" things will likely go a lot faster.

I personally do better with CAD software such as fusion or freecad since my mind doesn't work in the code realm since I have more of a hardware mindset. Translating the picture in my head to code is more difficult than drawing it using the standard CAD set of tools.

My opinion on OpenSCAD is that it is a very useful piece of software which many have used to make some very interesting things. If you have a background in code I recommend giving it a go. I largely view it as "the coder's CAD".

I was just about to say the same: OpenSCAD is CAD for programmers. It's very different from what's generally considered "CAD".

That's not necessarily a bad thing; there's a clientele for it, especially here on HN. But as a mechanical engineer who's used quite a few industry standard CAD systems, I'm sorry to say I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Funnily, just a few days ago I tried FreeCAD, and found it to be better than I had expected.

I switched from Fusion to Freecad just before the 1.0 update.

Freecad 1.0 is a gamechanger IMHO. It so far has suited all my needs as well as being significantly easier to use than the pre 1.0 versions.

FreeCAD feels like blender before the UI revamp. I can tell it's powerful but the UI is opaque to me.

For functional-oriented programmers.

There is no explicit iteration, so if you want to do flexible spacing for any reason, like distribute a feature evenly along a dynamic length, you need to use recursion.

Not to be a 3d print snob but....

Aside from the failure it looks like it wasn't the best print to start with. Lots of rashing from support and curling at the edges. You can see on the flats where the support was and the outer curve of the elbow looks like it likely wasn't airtight. Appears to me to be printed with the inlet facing upwards.

Better support planning, settings and possibly orientation may have helped.

Other commenters are saying it was likely PLA-CF, which I totally agree with based on the testing, but I can't help but think there is no possible way the person printing this item did not know that. I doubt the print would have come off as good as it did when using ABS-CF settings on PLA-CF.

Big chain of poor choices.

I've almost made that exact same mistake (but not on a critical part). I had a bunch of identical rolls with CF loaded filament of different base materials and just looking at the filament you really couldn't tell.

Right...I have loaded the wrong material before.

It didn't take long before I noticed. PLA is super liquid at ABS temps :)

(Not to mention that in my case ABS bed temps would melt the bottom of the PLA)

Oh that could have been quite messy if you had done that unattended.

I've gone through a couple of thousand kg of filament in the last year and I've had some 'interesting' failures.

I can only speak for what I have seen in the US..but it seems to me that a large portion of the SUVs out there are really just minivans with different doors in the back and a slight suspension lift. Especially ones like the VW Atlas and comparable. Not to mention the living room sized vehicles like the Toyota Sequoia and GMC Yukon. Most of the larger ones have 3 rows and essentially the same design internally. If you squint hard enough and imagine sliding doors on the sides there is very little difference.

People seem to buy way larger than they really need also...but that has kinda always been a thing in the US.

There were some weird but large benefits to manufacturers for SUVs over minivans (didn't count against fuel economy standards, based on less expensive platforms). Those are mostly gone but the scale and preferences that they generated have at least partly led to the SUV takeover.

An interesting fact is that the first gen US Honda Odyssey minivan completely lacks slide out doors commonly associated with the vehicle type.

This has been going on for at least 15 years. But it is a wider scale than just the Border patrol. Police agencies monitoring cameras and working with other agencies to notify in advance of people coming through. Flagged plates are pulled over. IIRC, "Desert snow" was part of this. [1] I suppose the new thing now is the bandwidth and tech to watch more cars. Local police forces and cities are purchasing more readers and installing them on cars and around town in certain bottlenecks. In my town there has been a bit of an uproar...but about 25 years too late (my area started this after 9/11).

Certain highways have always been worse than others though. Back in 2013 I was working with Trinitylabs in Portland developing 3d printers (For those of you in Ruby on rails this was Ezmobius' company). After working for a week doing 15hr days getting 3d printers assembled I was driving home along the Columbia river gorge but I was on the highway on the Washington side. I was pulled over in the middle of nowhere at ~10pm for going 8mph over the limit. After a bit of talking and letting him know what I was doing..including a 20min conversation about 3d printing on the side of the highway in literally the middle of nowhere [2] the officer tells me "I only pulled you over because you are on a known drug running highway...and you are driving an Audi which is a known drug runner car."

At least he was honest :)

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2014-09-09-police-seizure-black-asp...

[2] We were so far out that he his radio wouldn't work to contact his dispatch...he had to use a cellphone :)

The squeaking wheel gets replaced.