Bot PC...

[harryball]

Has anyone tried one of these to run the bot?

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/desktop-studio-hybrid?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

I'm thinking about getting one, it seems to lend itself very well to enclosing it into a little "clean box" with only the keyboard, mouse and monitor being exposed to the harsher shop conditions.

/RB

[angus_hines]

Never used one but I can see its potentials as you mentioned.

[harryball]

I'm going to call my Dell rep tomorrow and try to cut a deal on a stripped down (no os etc...) version and see what I can get. I'll keep you guys posted. I think this would make a great ShopBot control PC.

/RB

[bcammack]

There are other alternatives as well:

http://us.kontron.com/products/hmis+and+displays/panel+pc++micro+client/v+panel/v+panel+150.html (http://us.kontron.com/products/hmis+and+displays/panel+pc++micro+client/v+panel/v+panel+150.html)

http://www.aewin.com.tw/htm/sem_7705.htm

Although the latter doesn't seem to have located an American distributor just yet.

[harryball]

I'd hate to venture a guess what those industrial PC's would cost.

How about the Dell mini-9, anyone used one of those? http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9?c=us&cs=22&l=en&s=dfh

I'm looking for practical and cheap. The Studio is still an option but pushes $580 once configured, shipped and taxed.

I can get the mini 9 for about $450 delivered. I'm concerned about the software windows actually fitting on the screen though...


/RB

[harryball]

To answer my own question, not a good option on the mini-9. The shopbot control software does not fit in 1024 x 600 resolution so you would loose the bottom of the control window.

I hate to go with a mini-tower or some other large system, it's hard to set it up and keep the air around it filtered without building up so much heat and taking up a lot of space... but that may be my cheapest option.

/RB

[bill.young]

Hey Robert,

I bought one of the Dell mini-9's specifically to see if it could run a ShopBot...it seemed like an ideal form factor and is easy to tote around.

With the current Control software you get almost all of the control window if you autohide the toolbar at the bottom, but the beta software has shrunk the control window just a little so that it will fit on the screens of these little laptops.

The bad news is that the USB speed is just on the edge of being too slow if you do things like big 3d files. I haven't fiddled with the usb settings very much...it works fine for the kind of cutting that I do...but might not work for everyone.

Sure is cute, though!

Bill

[jay_p]

I have also been curious about these computers:
http://usa.aopen.com/
It seems like a small, fanless computer like these or the Dells these would be ideal for a dirty environment.

Jay

[harryball]

For the moment I dug up and old mini-tower P4 that should do the job. It's a step up from the notebook and has USB 2.0. I'm going to put a dust sock over it and be done with it for a while. On the other side of the coin... I did order 2 x 24" Wide panel Dell monitors for my design PC! If I could find a couple of 48" ones I could do all my drawing 1:1 scale :-)

/RB

[bcammack]

www.newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com) is a treasure trove of mini-ITX componentry, plus things that perhaps you've not thought of previously.

For instance, they sell an IDE/Compact Flash adapter that plugs into the spot on the motherboard where the ribbon cable for the hard drive/cd rom would plug in. Then you plug a 4gig or 8gig CF card into the adapter, the computer sees it as a bootable hard drive device.

Less heat. Zero chance of a HD crash. Fun stuff. For the flush, they have genuine SSD drive modules (solid state drive) with quite a bit more capacity and the IDE interface built in. They just cost $400-$500+ right now. The price of being an early adopter.

I could have a lot of fun with this stuff with the proper funding...

[harryball]

I've bought from them before, you're right, some really cool stuff. In this case I found a P4 (in fact I found two! I've just got so much junk) and it has been assigned to bat bot duty. Price was key... if I had to buy a new bot PC I couldn't have afforded the 2 cool new 24" monitors... really can't wait for those to arrive.

I am interested in the IDE Compact Flash adapter. What would be really cool is to set 2 of them up and run them in a RAID configuration. I think that would be about as close to crash proof as you could get on a bot controller.

"proper funding" right... I don't think I'll ever have "proper funding" for all the toys I'd like to buy. :-)

/RB

[ed_lang]

Sounds to me like one of you will tell the rest of us what hardware to buy to get the following---

motherboard that will install in the control box with Compact Flash for drives and only needing to run keyboard, video, mouse and usb thumb drive cables out of the control box. Oh, and a very lean version of WinXPpro that will fit on the Compact Flash drive and have room for some cut files.

Then the USB cable length to the ShopBot control board can be very short!

Looking forward to that upgrade!

[drodda]

I bought one of the compact desktops a couple years ago from Dell. We have replaced the power supply twice as the unit is too small to get good air flow to keep everything cool. So if you plan on enclosing the computer to make it dust proof I would say you would be adding to the heat issues.