Hey Sandy,
As always, thank you for your hard work on this awesome project. I've been able to successfully upload the newest firmware to my Arduino Uno and can get it to work with the Polargraph Controller Software v1.14 - but not with v1.17. The latest controller software won't recognize my Arduino in any port no matter which port I use (I've tried this on a Win XP and Win 7 machine). The Setup -> Serial Port dialog box is just an empty gray box.
Do you have any suggestions for how I may be able to fix this?
Thanks in advance,
MakerBlock

Hello! Right, I know what this is, it happens to me all the time, and it's a longstanding issue that I've never managed to get to the bottom of, actually appears in all versions.

What happens is that the controls that are meant to appear in that little dialog get drawn into the main window instead. There is an associated exception report in the console but you won't see that in the standalone version. So on mine at least, if I hit "serial port" and then the window comes up blank, I switch to the "input" tab and look up at the top, I can see the serial port selector controls _underneath_ the main control panel menu buttons. I can usually just about squeeze the mouse in to click one of the check boxes. Which is fortunate if that's the checkbox you want. If it isn't, save the config and restart and hope it behaves better next time.

I'm not sure what prompts it, but it's often fixed by asking it to try a different com port, so it makes me think it's when you're asking for a serial port that isn't in the list. If you can't get into it at all, remember you can edit your default.properties file directly and change the com port there. I can't remember the exact property key, but something like controller.serial.port. Set it to 0 to select "no connection" and try a restart.

good luck!
sn

Sandy,

I think that was it! I did see the serial ports hidden on the Input screen behind the top right options. Manually editing the properties file didn't seem to work, but some combination of restarting the program and fiddling with the properties file must have made it work - because I was able to draw with the latest controller software.

I tried out a Vector drawing and discovered it was, indeed, many many times faster than v.1.1.4. Unfortunately, I experienced the same hang that I had experienced a while back - http://makerblock.com/2012/03/restarting-a-stalled-drawbot-drawing/ .

Actually, now that I restarted it, it's been running for about an hour and a half without a problem. 🙂 (Win XP, tiny little Dell netbook, Arduino Uno + Adafruit motorshield)

Thanks again for your help!!!
MakerBlock

Have just updated the controller - hopefully fixed this issue.
http://www.polargraph.co.uk/2012/06/new-controller-update-for-the-weekend-v1-1-8/