Author Archives: davidcrocker

Home Energy Management System Part 4: Characterising the Hypervolt Current Transformer

Posted on October 9, 2022 by davidcrocker

The Hypervolt EV Charge Point is a UK-manufactured 7kW single phase unit. It is one of the smartest looking EV chargers on the market. It has no controls on the unit and can only be controlled via a smartphone or similar via the cloud server. Continue reading →

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Home Energy Management System Part 3: Planning the hardware

Posted on October 9, 2022 by davidcrocker

In order to meet my objectives without running wires from one part of my house to another, I will need at least the following WiFi-connected units for control and monitoring. Continue reading →

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Home Energy Management System Part 2: Hacking the iBoost+ protocol

Posted on October 2, 2022 by davidcrocker

To monitor and control the iBoost+, one option would be to fake the sender current transformer input, and add a current transformer to measure the power being fed to the immersion heater. But if we can decode the RF protocols, it would be simpler to fake the sender RF transmission, and read the messages sent by the main unit to the Buddy. Continue reading →

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Home Energy Management System Part 1: Objectives

Posted on October 2, 2022 by davidcrocker

This series will record my adventures in building a home Energy Management System, to monitor and control solar PV generation, battery storage, EV charging, hot water heating, and grid import/export. Continue reading →

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Adding filament monitors to the Hemera tools

Posted on November 2, 2020 by davidcrocker

The imminent 3.2beta release of RepRapFirmware includes support for filament monitors connected to Duet 3 expansion and tool boards. This post describes how I added filament monitors to the two Hemera tools on my E3D Tool Changer.

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Improvements to the Hemera Tools

Posted on June 6, 2020 by davidcrocker

Since building my first Hemera tool controlled by a Duet3D Tool Board, I have built a second one and made some improvements.

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Large Kossel update

Posted on May 7, 2020 by davidcrocker

My large Kossel variant has been running for several years now. It is reliable and produces good prints. I have however replaced the extruder drive and the power supply by different models, and added a filament monitor. I will now … Continue reading →

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Converting the E3D Tool Changer to Duet 3 with Hemera Tools (Part 2)

Posted on March 4, 2020 by davidcrocker

Configuring the Duet 3 The Duet 3 configuration and other system files I use are based on the ones that I published for Duet WiFi/Ethernet running RepRapFirmware 3. They are configured so that X0 Y0 is the centre of the … Continue reading →

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Converting the E3D Tool Changer to Duet 3 with Hemera Tools (Part 1)

Posted on March 2, 2020 by davidcrocker

The E3D Tool Changer is a versatile platform for multi-material 3d printing, laser cutting/engraving, and associated techniques requiring a stable XYZ motion system. Although it is also available with fewer tools or no tools, the common configuration is four 3D … Continue reading →

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Using exceptions in C++ embedded software

Posted on December 27, 2019 by davidcrocker

For several years I have been the lead developer of RepRapFirmware, which is firmware for 3D printers running ARM Cortex processors. Until recently I saw no compelling reason to use exceptions, so I compiled the firmware with gcc options -fno-exceptions … Continue reading →

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