How To Tutorial : UMG Wrap box ( graphical part of inventory system )

This has got to be the simplest point of attack to handing the graphical side to an inventory , in a lot of cases things like the scrollable lists are used with widgets that themselves are lists just in a different orientation , this works but is just more complex so why do this to yourself in this modern era of UE5.1+

( why is the thumbnail offset to the left )

Setup the inventory item widget , in the top righthand part of the screen set the size of the widget to custom and make a size

 

Drag in a canvas and a Button

un believably thats it and all you have to do just for starters , you can style the entry from here but this gives you the base thing

Unreal Engine 5 - Mouse inverting

 

Unreal Engine 5.1 - single line trace

 

Unreal Engine 5.1 - Blueprint function library

 

it's 2 am and this is my rant of the property market and i can't think of a better title

Just in case someone actually reads this and the 78 views a month this blog now gets isn't bots and an actual human is reading it I'm writing this more for my own benefit these days buts it's still likely to give someone a chuckle, it's 1:44am I'm sitting in bed with two laptops the other one I'm running sudo apt-get update && upgrade on and can't sleep like usual and I just read an article on some fucking wanker in Sydney that's just breathed life into the dumbass idea of airbnb`ing their bloody swimming pool which i bet came from a semi lucid night of drinking at some dodgy bar and a bet with a friend , what exactly is happening here?

The Australian property market is a sick and twisted joke where the goal has become to extract as much out of it as possible before everything goes tits up. then I read that the recent census 2021 revealed that across Australia there are over 1 million 'homes' empty or at least there were on the census night ...  go back a few words ok more than a few to the word 'homes' see what I did there..??? I'll show you something and it'll take just as much observation power as that ..

**Btw a 'home' is where you live breathe eat and shit , a house is a building and not a lot more than that most people will miss the meaning here

This is the official release from the ABS:

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/housing-census/latest-release#data-download

at no point .. or at least not one that i can find using ctrl + F do they actually use the word 'home'

thats because there is a difference .. now do a google search on the topic.. here you go just click here -->>>  here

here's where the observation power comes in because all of a sudden it's turned into '1 million empty homes'  ..  what the fuck is going on here ( i ask while the update is no where near finished and Bebe Rexha is playing in my ears at a volume likely to cause some kind of long term damage at some point in the future anyway whatever)   

Just about every single article written on this calls them 'homes' .. but why? the truth is it feeds into people's common problem and in a lot of of cases the greatest stressor in modern life the roof over ones head, and ultimately leads to more clicks no-one cares about a empty building but the word 'home' has a certain heart string tugging effect  and thats about it

According to https://chp.org.au/about-homelessness/data-and-demographics/ there is roughly 110,000 people homeless every night, and if the Victorian figures are anything go go off for the rest of the country 1 out of every 5 are children under 18 .... children ...  fucking children ... in Australia

Meanwhile our government solution to this is the address the supply issue .... and this is where shit gets just downright strange our beloved government comes up with this absolute gem of a shit show  --- >>:  https://www.chde.qld.gov.au/about/strategy/housing/housing-and-homelessness-action-plan-2021-2025

So the solution to investor driven underutilization is to pump more money into the market by constructing more dwellings (covers both houses and apartments) and relies on mostly private investment because lets face it the 1 billion they have dedicated to it sounds like a lot but it's essentially $10k per homeless person.. these people will do anything to avoid fixing the problem with a simple solution,  bring in 'use it or loose it' laws for investment properties. the concept is simple if you own an investment property and it isn't being utilized in some way whether it is rented out or Airbnb you should run the risk of it being taken off you or the taxes to own it should elevated to help pay for the adverse effects your investment causes, there is nothing wrong with this idea and it certainly wouldn't cost a billion tax payer dollars

Incase you are wondering ( points for getting this far ) why are people investing the houses and leaving them empty ..... it makes no sense .... ya 

When you buy a house as an investment you have two choices one is to buy it with renting it out in mind for the long term in which case you are playing the "long game" and are considering the rental income in the plan a mere 13k at $250pw or you are playing the short game 

some of the reasons for a house to be empty include:

- in some cases the 13k income will bring the investor into a higher tax bracket

- part of the investment plan is to shift the property quickly and this can be difficult to do if the property is rented and the new owner wants it empty,

- empty houses usually attract a higher sales price which can be substantial in this market , we're talking differences of 50k - 70k

- there is a higher than reasonable risk of foreclosure this is because the investor is so over committed on the loans

- they just don't want the hassle of being a land lord and can afford not to be

- a bank or fund actually owns the house and it's simply not part of the business plan 

What a shit show ......... I can't wait for this to go tits up and it will at some point

Ebay - Is there a point for Australian sellers anymore?

 So bloody long time since I've written anything here, in fact so long I'm surprised BlogSpot still exists...

I have recently decided eBay is not longer for me as a seller.

The joke comes in the form of the postage, to compete with everyone else on there who sells the same thing as you you have to be competitive on postage in my case it was laser cutting signs and tags most of which fits inside a letter which costs about $1.70 to send anywhere within Australia eBay allows this as a postage method, as an added extra bit of theoretical protection I even put in the ad the I accept no responsibility for lost packages for those who choose to use the untracked letter based shipping

This is a choice the buyer makes they take the risk and go with the untracked postage when there is an option to use parcel post and shift the liability onto Australia post by virtue of a tracking number.

SO the customer orders the pet and you cut the details into it and send it off, simple enough you would think but no, in my experience and I'm not entirely convinced its totally Australia post there is higher than one would expect rate of letters that go missing in the post, and inevitably at some point the buyer hits that refund button, which starts a process of eBay asked for a tracking number, despite of course that the postage option chosen by the BUYER isn't included which quickly results in the seller assuming the cost of a refund of not only the item but the postage. there is no winning with eBay and never will be for small items china can have that by the looks of it

-=( My office for 3 days :P )=-

This is were i spent 3 days on teacup lcd development , life was difficult with no wifi...

-=( induction and capacitive proximity sensors )=-

Over the years there have been some interesting movements in endstops we've gone from crude mechanical switches to optical and hall effect switches, some of us of course haven't been using any and opted to manually position the nozzle before a print.

The latest fad is these proximity sensors which can be had for as little as $2 for inductive and $5 for capacitive (including shipping):

The mounting is normally done with a large nut and washer on the top and bottom:

The colours of the wiring seem to also be somewhat standardized brown for V+ blue for Gnd and Black for the signal output

The downside is that they require more than the 5v powersupply that is available on most endstop connectors and that the output when triggered is also the same as the voltage supplied to run them so you cannot just hook them up directly, however with a simple voltage divider we can bring that down to just below 5v again and hook them up using only two resistors:

The resulting output voltage is around 4.8v.

Something else to be aware of is that on some brands the colours aren't written in English and potentially may not be using the same colours as everyone else.

to use inductive sensors you will need something metallic as a flag and the sensing range is around 2 - 4 mm depending on the material, you can use just about anything though eg tinfoil, small screws even though the manufacturer will say the sensing range is for example 4mm it doesn't actually mean you can sense an aluminium bed through 4mm of glass.

to use the capacitive sensors there is usually a small tuning screw on the back since the sensor will pick up just about anything around it's sensing tip make sure when you turn this screw to tune it that you keep your fingers clear of it , it's also a good idea for repeat-ability sake to use the smallest practical sensing distance.

I decided that it was time to take apart my Bulldog XL extruder after running it for around a year and half in the production printing environment:

Aluhotend V7

The Aluhotend V7 is here, (it's been available for a while now actually) 

The main difference between the the V7 and the V6 is the extra threaded M3 hole and the clamp style heater cartridge retaining system everything else is more or less the same.

I currently don't plan on making any further changes to the design of the hotend, so far this design has proven itself to work very well and operate reliably for very long periods of time, general feedback has been excellent with very very few problems that even google can locate.

currently for sale in the usual places, click on the my shop link on the left to go to the store

PETG: Adventure in warp

Finally got around to printing with PETG , Sadily however it reacts the same way as PLA when left in a car for a day and a half. interestingly though it has a much higher tensile strength... testing on that to come

-=( Aluhotend V6)=-

Aluhotend - V6 now available

after some review information from Thomas Sanladerer i have made a few changes and now the V6 version of my hotend is up for sale

- The nozzle has been upgraded with a small round flat around the orifice.  - this has improved the quality of the top solid layers

- The heat-sink is now tapped all the way through and a hollow grub screw locking the thermal barrier in place which allows the hotend length to be micro-adjustable which is very handy for those who want to do a dual extruder setup this also means there is nolonger bowden specific version - this was something that has been on the cards for a while, however due to the availability of hollow grubscrews they all have to currently be drilled by hand

- The hole for the heater cartridge is smaller measure 6.2mm down from 6.5mm for more contact with the heater cartridges - this is something a lot of people have asked for  however the next version will more than likely have a clamp style system similar to the E3d configuration

as always the hotend is available for purchase at :
webstore
Ebay , Ebay

Openscad: intersection and linear extrude

Openscad: How do to an if statement

Openscad: how difference and union works

openscad: how to do a chamfered hole

Openscad: simple hexagon shape

Openscad: how to do a cube with round corners (hull)

Thermal runaway test #2

Here is the second thermal runaway test

and the 4k timelapse version

-=( Thermal runaway test #1 )=-

This is the video of the thermal runaway test, it's not very scientific however it does the job, in future i think i will just timelapse it on the samsung or the nikon so i can upload it as a 4k video

below is the images of the aftermath of the hotend 

depending on the weather i will do it again only with a 19v powersupply