Hi Sandy -
I installed firmware. Looks ok so far. However, I am getting "No serial connection" error when launching polargraphcontroller application. In Device Manager (Win7), Arduino Mega 2560 is showing up on the COM3 port; the drivers are successfully installed. I selected Serial Port and the pop-up window contained 2 entries: No serial connection and COM3. COM3 is grayed out.

Any thoughts?

Thank you,
Andrey

Here's a not very interesting test SVG file for you.
https://www.box.com/s/dgvm4bwpkhlqp5j2z2gs

Hi Andrey, your last problem sounds like the most significant to me - the drawing that is coming out is completely different to the one that you are attempting to draw? You'll have to explain - I don't understand at all. What do you mean by uploading a pic? What form, and upload to what?

The serial port connection items don't really have a "disabled" state (officially anyway), I'm not sure how it got greyed out. All serial ports are listed in the little dialog, whether they are in use or not. Once one is chosen, the controller waits for a message from an arduino connected on that port to say it is alive, and available to take commands. Until that happens, the controller cannot be sure it has a connection.

The arduino broadcasts READY_200 every 5 seconds. The first one often misfires - this is what mine looks like:

About to connect to serial port in slot 1
Successfully connected to port COM11
incoming: ñXhéêUHùÞx`±€xeùREADY_200
incoming: READY_200

The raw exchange (including the READYs) can be seen in the console (ctrl-c to open it).

Pen up / down. Clicking pen lift or pen drop in the controller should put a command like C13,90,END or C14,0,END into the command queue. If you see that happening, that is good. Do it when the console is open and see that there are no errors reported from the arduino in response. (No response is the correct response.)

There is also a "test lift range" button on the setup tab. This wiggles the pen lift back and forth a couple of times. You can use the number spinners above it (pen up position, pen down position) to control what the two positions are. If you find the move is not actually moving the servo, (but it is making a buzz), try adding 90 (or otherwise changing them around a bit) to both of these values and try again. The numbers are degrees, so there's not much point in going over 360, and they'll normally a difference of about 90ish between the two positions. The servos often don't seem to work well at their extremes of travel. Once you're happy with the range of motion, click "upload lift range" to save it to the on-board eeprom on the arduino.

Let me know how you get on, copy/paste any messages you find opaque.

sn

Andrey, thanks for the pic - difficult to diagnose without any information. That's an expected result for a pale image with a fat pen and a small grid size.

When you say "upload" an image, do you just mean draw it?

Try doubling or trebling your grid size or reducing your pen size. A pic of your successful pen width test will be illuminating.

sn

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