My latest book "Beginner's Guide to 3D Printing" just launched on Kickstarter.
It's a new direction for me so I'm not sure if it will be well received or not. I need the support of Kickstarter to get that first batch of books printed for distribution and determine how much interest there is in this type of book.

The book takes a reader through the various low cost home 3D Printers and then selects the Da Vinci 1.0. From there the reader is shown how to get that first print going. Then how to create their own with Tinkercad. Then how to get a professional print from Shapeways. Tips and Tricks to make the Da Vinci 1.0 printer even better. It's all in this book. So if you know someone or even yourself that is looking to get into 3D printing and don't know where to start, my book tries to help you through it all.

So please pass it on to your friends, relatives, etc. that the book is released and please help make it a success so more people can learn to have fun 3D printing products an having fun.

The people at Printrbot recently announced a new low cost printer. It's called the Printrbot Play. It's targeted at $399 but if history is any indication, that price will rise as all Printrbot 3D printers do. This is an interesting entry though because the sub $500 3D printer seemed like the low point. Now sub $400 seems to be the new line. The new Da Vinci Jr. at $349 seems to be the new low point for a fully assembled ready to user 3D printer.

The Play is all metal construction but a rather small build area at 100x100x130mm. The Da Vinci Jr at 150x150x150mm is larger. The Play has an aluminum print bed so it doesn't appear to offer a heated bed so I'm not sure if it will only print PLA like the Printrbot Simple, there other low cost metal 3D printer. The Da Vinci Jr. will print PLA only. The Play looks to maintain an open source software control while the Da Vinci Jr. is closed source.

It's clear that 3D Printers are getting both better and cheaper. And kits seem to be fading away with more companies offering fully assembled printers. I like the direction things are going. This gets us closer to a 3D printer in every house. Then the fun can really begin.

For anybody out there looking for a free open source BASIC compiler for PICs, then I highly recommend the Great Cow Basic Compiler. To make things even better, this compiler has been improved about 5000% in the last two years. A small group of individuals have contributed to making it better and I was one of the contributors to the team. There is now a new "Hot Release" available. It's called this because it's not a completely stable released but about as close as you can get without tons more testing.

I've talked about this compiler before and even created a website dedicated to it. When I created my GreatCowBasic.com website, there wasn't much documentation on the compiler. There wasn't an install facility. Setting a programmer up took a lot of steps. There were several different IDEs for it but none of them endorsed by the team.
Many bugs existed and the documentation was poor. Plus there were many requests for new commands. 

So I attempted to make it easier to use with the CHIPINO module as the hardware. Now the compiler has really grown from where it was. It now supports both PIC and AVR micros. I prefer PIC but now people using a CHIPINO can share code with an Arduino user. The SYNWRITE IDE has been improved and become the standard. The help files have been greatly improved. Tons of sample code are now included. Lots of new features and commands are part of Great Cow Basic.

Despite all these improvements, the simplicity of the compiler has been maintained. You can get access to any of the libraries and modify them if you really want/need to. What I like best is it still produces pure assembly code and I can load that into MPLAB or MPLAB X and debug with professional tools.

It really is a great compiler now and the price of FREE cannot be beat. So if you are just getting started with PICs, I highly recommend you look into this compiler. And if you like what you see, get involved, post to the forum, help find any missed bugs. It's truly a community project but far from a limited effort. It could easily sell for $100 or more based on what it can do but it remains free and completely open source for hobbyist or commercial use.