first off; Nice work & thanks for sharing!

I’ve tried your older version (older Arduino and controller software) and I decided to upgrade into your new package. (arduino UNO firmware and new zoom controller).

After I’ve installed all the P5 libraries I get a NullPointerException error – in the polargraphcontroller_zoom file – in the lines :

RG.setPolygonizer(RG.ADAPTATIVE);
loadedShape = RG.loadShape(“test2.svg”);

I have absolutely no Processing skills,,,do you know where could be the problem?

thanks again!!

greetings from Argentina!

The variable voltage supply is a great idea – once I get this off the ground I’d like to try that. What does the extra power get you? More speed, a steadier pen line?

Thanks again for sharing your work on this project!

In my experience vampire teeth and weird eyes are a result of too much contrast between pixels, and can be improved by increasing the sample area. Only works up to a point of course, and it’s at the expense of overall “sharpness”.

Select image, or centre image are both doable, but I admit I probably won’t. I have a set of guides that I can overlay and turn on or off, and they include the pictureframe corners, and a centre line – what I could do is move the centre line to on top of the page, so that when you do “move image” the mouse will designate the centre of the image, and all you’d need to do is line it up with the centreline. In retrospect, not having too many automatic layout options was a deliberate choice – it’s to avoid giving the impression that there’s a “proper” way to do things, and you won’t get good results if you deviate from The Way. I’m much more interested in suggesting that you crop and place images according to what looks good rather than what’s in the original file, and encouraging users to experiment with the effects of drawing in different areas of the machine – or rather, to discourage a standardised, automatic approach. All part of my war on standardisation! Of course it makes me feel good to make people happy too, so if it becomes a serious impediment, I’ll do it, I’m a sucker.

Motors: look at rated current, it needs to be 600mA or less for each one. That’s the limit for the L293D driver chips in the motorshield. The voltage doesn’t really matter much, mine are 4v or so. Avoid very low voltage ones as they will tend to be high amperage ones. The first I got were 3v, but drew 2amps so fried the motorshield. Ooops.

Steps should be probably at least 200 steps per rev (1.8 degree per step) unless you’re using a geared motor.

The power supply should supply your motor power, so if you have two 600mA motors, you should, in theory have a 1200mA power supply. I used a 600mA supply for ages with mine, and it only died after some bad behaviour, I use 1000mA ones now, no problems in reality. I also use variable voltage supplies because it lets me turn the voltage up if I feel like I need some more power, and if I can handle the extra heat. I usually run at 6v, and usually have a separate supply for the motorshield, while the logic and the arduino run straight off the USB cable.

The servo I use is just a generic mini servo, nothing special about it, just use the standard control horn to lift it off the page.

I’ll follow your page to see how you get on!
Cheers!

It’s hard to tell from the pic, but are the pixels in the preview now diamond shaped, or are they still round? Seeing a more accurate diamond shape would be very helpful. I’ve done a few portraits that have turned out somewhat sinister because the subjects have been rendered with vampire teeth or weird eyes, which I hadn’t been able to tell from the preview.

Now that I’ve done many drawings, I find myself wishing for a “select whole image” button, as well as one to “center image” since I do those steps manually for each project. Then again, no one wants too many buttons crowding the screen.

Thanks again! Get back to it!