New Software Release v.0.8.0

Finally we made it. The new Software Release v.0.8.0 is out! It is more stable and brings you the
long awaited two laser support. The new Software is also compatible to other open source 3D-Scanners ( a blog post about connecting other devices will follow in a few days). The best way for getting started is with a fresh Raspbian image.

What is new?

Multiple Laser Support

The most interesting new Feature is that the new Version will bring you multiple laser support. In most cases two lasers are quite enough, but more are theoretically possible.

When you perform a scan with two lasers, three pointclouds are created. One for each laser and one is a merged result of both lasers. This will bring you all possibilities of post processing. Sometimes a bad calibration can lead to different scaled pointclouds for each laser. With a downloadable pointcloud for each laser you are able to align the pointlcoud by yourself with a tool of your choice (MeshLab or CloudCompare).

You will find detailed instructions in the new documentation on how to use the FabScan with two lasers.

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Documentation

The documentation is refactored and it is based on Restructured Text instead of Markdown now. This will improve the documentation and will enable a lot of featured on Read The Docs. We are able to offer different formats of the documentation, e.g pdf. There is also a new more detailed calibration section.

There is still a lot of work to do on the documentation, please be patient. If you are interested in helping to improve the documentation, please let us know.

Temperature Observations

Some users had temperature problems even with the Raspberry Pi 3. The new Release brings a Temperature Watch Service and it will show a warning message when the Raspberry Pi reaches a temperature over 80°C. When a high temperature is reached the pi will
throttle the CPU. This can lead to a very slow scan. Sometimes the scan process is interrupted by this issue.

I am testing an active CPU cooling solution. When it is done i will show the results in another blog post. You can find the STL File of the duct as a download in the forum.

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Bug fixes.

A lot of bugs are fixed within the new Software Release. Here is a list of the major bugfixes:

• FabScan freezes during high resolution scans
• Calibration improvements, calibration is more stable now
• Faster loading of the FabScan Frontend when the FabScan is not connected to the Internet
• Firmware Improvements which leaded to dead lock.
• Fixed asynchronous stepper mode.
• Documentation updated.

Read the Changelog for more information. Try the new Software and give us feedback in the FabScan Forum!