I didnt know if I should post here or in the build forum but here goes... I have built most of my machine (drawing surface, mounted stepper motors with sprockets, wired motors to block terminals) and am getting ready to wire the motors to the arduino uno (atm328) with the motorshield on top of it. But I have no background in software, Processing, and dont understand where all of the polargraph folders are supposed to go.

I downloaded the Polargraph1.2.5.zip file from here (http://code.google.com/p/polargraph/downloads/list) and now dont know what to do with all the files. The application in this download (windows64 bit) did not work either (gave error message- could not find javaw.exe). So then I downloaded Processing, but have no clue what this is for.

What is the purpose of the Arduino software in the polargraph? Is it used solely to upload the 4 libraries in the download to the board?

What is the purpose of Processing program? Is this what the drawing is run through before going to the arduino board? It looks very similar to the arduino software- do I even need the arduino software to create drawings with the polargraph?

Could anyone please help me find basic, detailed instructions on where all the files/folders from the zipped Polargraph1.2.5 download go?

I think the arduino/libraries folder is only supposed to have 4 folders (AFMotor, AccelStepper, UTFT, and UTouch (got last 2 from download)). Trying to frankenstein this together from the instructables website, although the instructions seems very foreign considering my lack of knowledge, and the polargraph website.

If there are any things I should learn before going forward about arduino, or processing, etc I would be most appreciative if someone could point me in the right direction.

attached are some pics of the build. slanted wall mounted surface with some motor mounts I welded up, and sprockets lasered out of acrylic (makerbot 3d prints of sprockets did not come out too well, like usual). just made the gondola this morning

thanks for the quick response time! i have been messing with it for an hour or 2 and have figured some of it out, downloaded java and got the controller application to run, then set COM port and it recognized my arduino board...was really excited. i saw the entry about xloader in the news update page of the polargraph site, thanks for the heads up about the polargraph_server_a1.cpp.hex though, that seems super useful. if i WERE to compile through the arduino IDE, how could this be done? (for future reference). i think i have each of the folders in the arduino/libraries folder but how would they all be loaded at once to the arduino?

i think Ill try to upload the file with xloader, hopefully i can get mine up and running soon. thanks for the helpful explanations to all of this, things are definitely getting clearer! guess I was just in unnecessary despair mode this morning ha ha.

Good stuff - glad you got some results. The libraries themselves don't get uploaded individually, the arduino source code (that's the nine .ino files in the arduino-source/polargraph_server_a1) gets compiled, along with the libraries, into one big file, and then that file gets uploaded.

If you wanted to compile it from source, you'd copy the polargraph_server_a1 folder into your arduino sketch folder. That's normally in your "my documents" folder on windows machines, it is on mine anyway. And once it's there, when you open the Arduino IDE, and go to file->open-> and you should see polargraph_server_a1 in the list of available projects.

Then you can compile it to check you've got all the right libraries in the right place, or upload it directly.

Unless you're changing the code you shouldn't need to, but it's good to be able to do it. There's also a feature in the Arduino IDE called the serial monitor, and that shows the raw communication coming from your arduino - it's useful to check whether it's working properly.

sn