Hey up, the problem with the pen width not working is just sloppy coding on my part - it sends the change commands when you use the keyboard to change, but there is no point where the preset command is sent automatically. It used to get loaded into the queue on startup, but I took it out - can't quite remember why. I should put it back eh.

The second issue is odd - it looks just like a regular pen slip, but it seems strange that it managed to draw the whole corner before it decided to give up. Slipping is normally caused by an over-heavy gondola or moving too fast. Its much more likely to happen in the top corners where the weight is borne more or less on one motor.

That said, it depends what slipped- either the motor slipped, or the cord slipped on the teeth of the sprocket. that could be caused by the counterweight catching on something. I think it is just coincidence that it happened at that point.

The only way I've found to diagnose this kind of problem is - unfortunately - watching.

cheers!
Sandy

Hi, the speed settings (acceleration and max speed) are both quite like the pen width command, in that it doesn't get sent automatically - only when there's a manual change been keyed. There isn't a speedometer, but if you look closely at the console while you change speeds, the machine does report back its speed. It will get set back to its default when it gets reset.

I'll add a speedometer soon, and tell it to automatically send current pen width and speed settings before each drawing. Anything else you'd want to see in it?

Cheers!
Sandy

I know what you mean, with multi layer drawings its hard not to have it all descend into noise.

Don't forget that any pixels that are bright green (00FF00) are completely ignored by the controller - so they won't get sent at all. That gets rid of big empty pixels around the edges, but of course empty pixels in the middle still get drawn.

The pen lift servo is surprisingly good, and doesn't really affect accuracy or anything. Slow though. The problem with doing it in the controller is that the controller doesn't know what pixels will be empty. But it should be fairly straightforward to make a toggleable mode that will make sure the pen is up for zero density pixels down for pixels where the density is >0.

Sandy