Have just committed a few firmware updates that make vector drawing much faster. It runs at your maximum speed now, so you might want to tone it down a little – big moves can get quite violent.
I have implemented some very rudimentary braking / acceleration to make it a bit smoother. Beforehand, small moves especially were very jerky.
That update is firmware only, and for polargraph_server_a1 as well as polargraph_server_polarshield, get the source code or the precompiled hex:
- polargraph_server_a1 (for Arduino UNO / Duemilanove / Seeeduino / ATMEGA328 based machines)
- polargraph_server_polarshield (for Arduino MEGA2560 / PolargraphSD / ATMEGA2560 based machines)
PolargraphSD users will also find that their touchscreens go blank after half an hour. Don’t worry, it’s just a screensaver, and it’ll come back on when you touch it or send a command.
Just updated…I didn’t bother slowing things down…I like the ray gun “pew-pew” sounds 1cm straight lines make on my machine. Long straight lines are disconcertingly fast, but they were accurate and the motors didn’t miss steps, so I don’t plan to slow down at the moment. Good fun!
The sound of the machine is one of my favourite things, and I was so disappointed when vectors turned out to sound so awful when I first did them. This makes them musical again!