Comments on: Polargraph Controller v2.0, I mean 1.0.

By: terance

terance — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 21:25:02 +0000

I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. Thank you.

By: sandy

sandy — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 13:39:15 +0000

Hello thanks! Though DRBO was Stuart’s work rather than mine. No need to apologise for being a noob – I fully intend to be a noob my whole life. Unfortunately you don’t really give any information about what’s going wrong (like symptoms), so it could be literally anything though. If you have got the controller working, then that’s good – it doesn’t matter if it shows up in the sketchbook folder if you can run it from somewhere else.

If you’re having issues with the controller (and libraries) you could try using the precompiled binaries instead of running from source.

I hope you are not following the links from this (two year old) article, and have instead come across the main “source code” page linked to at the top of every page on this site (http://www.polargraph.co.uk/source-code/).

There are no further documents re running on linux, beyond what you can google for. The truth is, though I develop on linux at my day job, all polargraph development happens on a windows box, so I have never tried using either arduino or processing in any other environment.

It is also worth having a search of the forum here, there are a couple of threads that have talked about linux issues (I think I remember that happening anyway). And of course, that is a better venue for discussing and troubleshooting!

By: terance

terance — Sun, 05 Jan 2014 09:51:50 +0000

Love what you have done! I have built a drbo out of plexiglass and everything is going great with the assembly with the exception of the software. I am running linux (lxde) and most of the links and posts cater to windows, mac, and linux, in that order. Could you point me in the direction of were I can find cleaner instructions for linux. I’m good with my hands but I’m getting a little lost in regard to the code. I’ve got the polargraph controller up and running, processing is working, and the arduino ide is working. I’ve moved the files around as per the instructions on instructables, but all I get are errors when I try to upload to the arduino. Also, processing isnt seeing the polargraph controller in the sketchbook folder. Any suggestions? Sorry, I’m a n00b. Thanks for your time and I hope you have a great year.

By: sandy

sandy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:03:47 +0000

Hurray! There’s still some issues with moving the image around, and resizing, but it’s looking good eh!

By: Stephan

Stephan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:53:14 +0000

Well that worked very well. Thanks for that great update. Now the polargraph isn’t just great anymore. Now it is tremendous! 😉

By: sandy

sandy — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:11:06 +0000

Hey Stephan, sorry about that, I made a goof with two bits: Uploading the machine size to the machine did it in steps rather than mm, so it was much too high, and also the set home command wasn’t working properly.

The result was that C01 commands (move fast as possible) were fine because they don’t require the machine to work out where anything is, but C17 (move in a straight line) made the gondola head for the hills because it thought the machine was 20 times bigger than it really was and it had far to go.

What you needed to do to stop it was pause the queue (or clear it), and then reset the machine.

It was fixed a while ago, but the fix was in the code repo rather than the binaries. I’ve just made new binaries, so give them a shot. You’ll need to re-upload your machine sizes to the machine.

By: Stephan

Stephan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 18:30:49 +0000

Hi Sandy and all the other Polargraph friends out there,

i’ve got a problem with the now Code. I tried to use the new Software an plot some Vectors. Uploading the new servercode via aduino 1.0 was no problem at all. Also starting the precompiled windows binary. Everything went as usual in the Controller. But when i hit draw vector and set to polagraph to go something wierd happens. The gondola goes from homepoint to the startingpoint of the Vectorgraphic. The servo motor sets the gondola down. Then the gondola drives all the way down the machine and further on. Luckily my counterweights stop the gondola from falling off the machine, but the motors dont’t stop to go round. Stopping the machine in the controller has no effect, only thing that works is pulling the USB ant the powercable.
I allready tried different SVGs and reuploaded the servercode serverall times.
Anyone knows whats wrong?

Stephan

By: sandy

sandy — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:14:56 +0000

There is no loadedShape in the current code – try the newest version of the source.

By: sandy

sandy — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:09:25 +0000

Great thanks! I had spotted that one, then lost it again! Will commit a fix tonight.

By: fedeGa

fedeGa — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:34:30 +0000

hi there!
I have an issue in the DisplayMachine.pde file,

the line RPoint[][] pointPaths = loadedShape.getPointsInPaths();
throws at me an error. – Cannot find anything named “loadedShape” –

The pre compiled version seems to work fine,,I’ll give it a try tomorrow.
Nice work on the GUI by the way!