I made this PDF which I will include in the kit – a simple guide on setting up the Polargraph. This does not cover using the software really, since that’s another kettle of fish, but it’s about the physical stuff. It will become slightly more illustrated in the future.

Have a look at it at Simple setup guide.

Kits are getting halfway finished!  Crimping cables is a pain.  A PAIN.  Look at my bleeding fingers. MAR BLEEDIN’ FINGAHS!

Ahem. Right, next time round, I’m figuring out a better way to make wiring harnesses up.  Or maybe just buying the right sized wires or something.

In other news, have made a batch of gondolas up, and tested a couple, with beautiful results.  Best ever actually.  And I know I said today was going to be instructions day, well, what I meant was it was going to be taking photographs for instructions day.

Instructions day is tomorrow.  These kits are going to rock the house.

Each page now has a different set of buttons, which does mean that the list doesn’t drop off the bottom so often.  I’m aiming to be able to fit this onto a netbook screen, and it doesn’t quite right now.

Machine, image and page settings are now specified in a properties file instead of hard-coded into the program.  This properties file (called “polargraph.properties” lives in the sketch folder, and will be created if it doesn’t exist already, so there’s nothing new to do.

To load an image, change the filename in the properties file.  This means that there’s nothing that you need to change in the code anymore, which is nice.  That means it can be packaged as an .exe rather than needing processing to run in.

I have a feeling that this external file will be a spanner in the works if this application ever gets embedded in a webpage as an applet, because I think applets aren’t allowed to make files and things in the browser environment.  Hey, I should try it, and embed the software here so anyone can play with it.

As usual, you can download the latest code from the SVN repository at

http://code.google.com/p/polargraph/source/browse/

Hello, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the success of this project, and it’s taken over everything else for the last week or so.  I’m probably going to stop taking new orders after this weekend, for a few days at least.  I’ve got plenty of work, but importantly, need to review the pricing. 

I am making a profit on this kit, but not an awful lot, and I don’t know if it’s enough to justify me having no time to work on any other projects.  It’s still very much a hobby-sized profit, and I’ve eaten into it a little bit by upgrading the quality of the kit too.  Also haven’t really found what the real cost of packaging and things is – I think I have estimated ok here, but we’ll see!

I know it’ll get cheaper if volume increases, but the thing that won’t decrease is the time taken to make up harnesses and finish parts, and packaging and that kind of thing, and the profit (as it stands) could never hope to support employing help, even if I was in a position to manage that.

So this current price will be here until next week, but after that it might go up a bit.  Probably not much, and maybe not at all, but probably a little bit.

On the other hand, I’ll be working on a custom board to replace the arduino + motorshield combo (while still being arduino compatible), and that might shave a few quid off the price at a future date.  I quite like shipping actual general-purpose boards with this kit because it makes it a real tinkerer’s kit, but it’s an expensive way of doing it.

Have just asked for another batch of controllers and some more sprockets.  Lead time to get parts, if I had none at all in stock, is about two and a half weeks I think.  That sounds good to me, but of course that’s only possible for fairly small quantities.

Small quantities are easy enough to get quickly, bigger batches (where the real cost savings are) will ship direct from manufacturers, and that normally means months rather than days.  I’ve got a dozen orders now, and expect to have shipped them all during the second week in October, the first couple will go sooner than that.

Just wanted to say too, that the response to this project has been amazing – a total surprise to me.  I mean, I knew it was a cool project (that’s why I did it) but I thought that it was only me that thought that, and I always think the stuff I do is cool, so it doesn’t count.

I’m so grateful for all the support, and hope I can deliver and make everybody happy!  I’ve had my busiest week EVAR, yet still seem to have got very little achieved beyond antagonising my postman with the number of parcels I have streaming into me.

I have been threatening some illustrated build / setup instructions, and will get onto that next week since my weekend is already written off

I have also got some ideas for code changes that will take priority:

• Save the machine size into EEPROM using the regular interface rather than having to reprogram the arduino every time.
• Give the machine a name to make controller set up easier / safer.

I hope I’ve got enough program space for the EEPROM library.

After that, I’ll be bullying the controller into a more practical shape.  Promise.

Thanks for letting me know my paypal button was goosed.  Not sure why, something about options being too long, or bad characters or something.

Anyway, I’ve fixed it.  I think!  Beautiful day in Edinburgh today.