About

Cube is a collection of open-source tools, designed to provide the ability to measure magnetic fields in 3D and to visualize the results. It uses commonly available components and software to achieve this. The primary sensor is Melexis MLX90393, often used in joysticks and similar devices. The electronics are based around a common NXP development kit with an additional extension board. The software is written in Python and uses Mayavi toolkit to visualize the data. A new major revision of Cube is in development, which aims to be fully OSHW (open source hardware) compliant and have universal sensor support. The name Cube arised from the shape of the mechanical part - it is somewhat cube shaped.

Components

There are 3 major components. Each is designed to be used as a standalone tool, if required. The following descriptions are fairly brief, feel free to browse the sources for more info. The hardware components are licensed under CERN-OHL-W v2. The firmware for the electronics is under LGPL-v3 and the software is under a MIT license.

Mechanical

The mechanical component provides a CNC base, derived from a 3D printer design. It uses CoreXY mechanics for the movement. Althought Cube contains this as a component, the rest of the tools can be used with any other similar CNC or 3D printer construction. Similarly, this component can be used as a base for a 3D printer or similar machine.

Electronics

The electronics (together with the firmware) provide the interface for controlling the mechanical component and communicating with the sensor and the computer. The electronics are in form of a expansion board (or a shield) for FRDM-K64F development kit from NXP. The shield provides 4 stepper motor drivers and various connectors for connecting the sensor and other parts. The shield and devkit combo can be used as a standalone controller for a CNC machine, with support for simple cartesian and CoreXY mechanics.

Software

The software consists of 4 simple Python scripts. They include a simple library for interfacing with the electronics. Two more tools are built on top of this library - a simple CLI console for manual control and an automated script to collect data to .csv files. The last script is a simple loading tool to setup the Mayavi visualization and load the data.

Showcase

Source

Current version

• Cube Mechanical
• Cube Board
• Cube Firmware
• Cube Software

New version (in development)

• Cube Electronics