Comments on: Fistful of polargraphs http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/06/fistful-of-polargraphs/ drawing by robot Mon, 14 May 2018 00:33:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.7 By: sandy http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/06/fistful-of-polargraphs/#comment-1622 Sat, 09 Jun 2012 20:06:31 +0000 http://www.polargraph.co.uk/?p=426#comment-1622 Hello! I’m excited too. All the hardware stuff is done – just gotta sort the code out now!

PolargraphSD vitamins kit will consist of all the pieces you’d find in the regular vitamins kit, but instead of an Adafruit motorshield to assemble there’ll be a polarshield with motor drivers, ready assembled. And an LCD with the SD card reader attached. I’m afraid to say that none of it is very cheap – the drivers alone cost more than an adafruit motorshield, so it’ll be about £100 for the SD vitamins kit.

I’m saying this to make the point that if all you want is printing from SD card, then you can do it much more cheaply (if less tidily) with a setup like on http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/04/polargraph-sd-prototypes/, or http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/02/state-of-the-art-tangle/. The benefit of the polarshield is it rolls up a physical interface, an SD card reader and an XBee port into one board. The more powerful drivers were just a by-product.

Bare shield kit will consist of an assembled polarshield, with a range of connectors, but no motor drivers, for something like £22.

Full shield kit will consist of an assembled polarshield plus drivers, and be about £38. Add a LCD/SD card reader for another £10.

I would love to push the prices down over the longer term, but if previous rounds have been anything to go on, I will have entirely miscalculated the investment required (in particular on non-scalable things like time) and the opposite will probably happen.

If people are particularly interested in any particular combination of hardware, then I’m happy to put something together too – I don’t really know what is most useful for you folks – please let me know.

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By: lythargic http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/06/fistful-of-polargraphs/#comment-1619 Sat, 09 Jun 2012 12:35:47 +0000 http://www.polargraph.co.uk/?p=426#comment-1619 hi sandy!
really excited to see the SD kits getting to the next stage.

i’m very interested in getting this in the near future, or, getting the vitamin kit next week. i’m still tossing up the $$$ vs product at the moment and i would love to know the final price of the SD soon!

regards from australia

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