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Author Topic: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
Doody
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Doody
Post Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: November 11, 2013, 16:40
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Hey All,

I'm new here, been talking to Sandy for a few weeks and I've set up a new machine, and it works great... but I must be doing something wrong.

It's an SD, 1 meter wide, about 1200 tall with all standard parts and running the latest firmware.

All the functions seem to be running great, it homes and I've measured it moving to a point in an A1 page area to almost mm precision, I could actually move it around all day with the move to point command, I'd actually be quite happy with that.

Buuuuuut I guessed I should draw something, so I did, Image_1...

Isn't it beautifully... uniform... But what I wanted (intended) to draw was Images_2 and some of my settings in Image_3...

I love thing thing ALREADY, just think how amazed I'm actually going to be once it's drawing... things.

Look forward to meeting all on here, any help would be awesome.

Doody

Anyone know what rookie/series of rookie mistakes I might be stumbling on?
Image
Image
Image
sandy
Administrator
Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: November 11, 2013, 17:13
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Welcome Doody! I suppose the good news is that it's moving, and is a fine set of squiggles.

What style pixel is it drawn with? (variable frequency square wave, scaled square wave etc.)

It looks like a pen width issue to me.

So, the pen lines on the page look like they are thicker than the 0.2mm that you have got in your penwidth settings. Remember you need to send your penwidth to the machine, and it will not be remembered when the machine is reset.

Something worth noting is that the preview of the pixel scaling (and in fact, the preview generally) is only meant to be indicative rather than definitive. Any pixel scaling greater than 1.0 will make the pixel overflow its bounds on the page (hence the overlap on the page), even though it might be nice to use it to fill in the gaps on the preview.

sn
Doody
Newbie
Posts: 3
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Doody
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: November 12, 2013, 21:53
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Thanks Sandy, I'll have a play around and see what happens.

I've just successfully churned out a few vectors at A2 for fun and the machine is working fine on all those aspects so I'll see if I can get the traditional styles happening next.

D
stereoeric
Newbie
Posts: 22
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stereoeric
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 10, 2014, 01:52
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Hi, Sandy - I finally got around to trying to get my SD kit to work, and I'm having exactly the same problem as Doody - all I can draw are very nice uniform "rectangles". I also have a non-SD polargraph, which I got to work with no problem. I'm running the Polargraph SD "tethered", and when I do a pen size test, everything looks fine, but when I try and draw something I just get uniform rectangles. If I press the "increase" or "decrease" pen size buttons on the touch screen, I don't see anything changing as far as "pixel size". I've read your instructions to Doody re. being careful to send the pen width to the machine. Does it make any difference whether you do it before or after uploading the machine spec? (I don't think so as I've tried every order imaginable. I'm using an ultra fine point Sharpie with a pen width of 0.3 mm, and regardless of whether the drawing I'm using is very light or very dark, the width of the rectangles is always about 3mm
Eric
kongorilla
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Posts: 362
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kongorilla
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 10, 2014, 03:14
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What grid size have you selected? Pen width adjusts how many zigzags can happen within a pixel rather than pixel size. Using a .3 pen size with too small a grid will result in uniformly shaded pixels because it can only draw one line within the pixels.

Try a grid size of 50 with your .3 pen width setting and report back.
stereoeric
Newbie
Posts: 22
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stereoeric
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 13, 2014, 23:56
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Thanks Kongorilla, for your input, however, when I use a grid size of 50, all that happens is that the rectangles get bigger.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stereoeric/sets/72157644662786995/

Maybe I should try uploading the software to the Arduino again, and see if that helps.

BTW, how do you embed photos into the Forum like Doody did?
sandy
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Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 14, 2014, 00:25
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Aha, you need to do a "quote" from a particular post to get the full toolbar panel thingy, that has embedding on it. It doesn't show up in the "quick reply" box. Hmph.

HAve you tried doing any pen width tests? (http://www.instructables.com/id/Polargraph-Drawing-Machine/step25/Pen-thickness/)

I was alerted to a pretty significant problem (with these symptoms) a couple of months ago. This was https://github.com/euphy/polargraph_server_polarshield/issues/3. I would grab the latest bundle from https://github.com/euphy/polargraphcontroller/releases and update your firmware. If nothing else, it will do no harm.

I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier.

(I edited this to make me seem less of a moron.)

sn
stereoeric
Newbie
Posts: 22
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stereoeric
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 21, 2014, 17:33
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Well, I uploaded the Hex file from 1.7.25-1.7.1, and now I don't even get any "rectangles" - just smooth curves! Right before I did this, I did the "pen test", and that turned out fine, with all the "zigs and zags" in place. Any idea what's going on?

One thing I have noticed, which is probably nothing to do with this problem, but I have a 64 bit laptop, but the 64 bit controller software won't run, but the 32 bit will, so that's what I use.

Eric
Image
Image
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sandy
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Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 21, 2014, 18:18
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It's a puzzle. Let me just go through this again:

1. Set grid size to 50.
2. Do the pen test, testing pen tip size from 0.3 to a bigger size. You find that the first segment is a good solid pattern. (Other segments not so important.)
3. Set pen width tip size to 0.3 and then "send pen tip size".
4. Select and render some pixels using "variable frequency square pixel".

Try setting the grid size to be enormous to try and elicit a wave from it.

I can see that the pixel commands in the queue _do_ have different brightnesses, so that bit is working properly at least.

Last thing: After uploading the new firmware, always need to "upload machine spec" too.

sn
stereoeric
Newbie
Posts: 22
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stereoeric
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 28, 2014, 17:35
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Here are my latest photos - I uploaded the machine spec, did a pen size test - top centre of first photo, pen size 0.31 to 2.31 if I remember correctly, then uploaded pen size of 0.31 and started drawing. As you can see, the distance between the arcs just got bigger (the little squiggle at the end of the first arc was because the paper was a little floppy at that point.)
Not sure where to go from here, short of reloading everything and trying again - sometimes computers don't do exactly what they did previously.

Eric
Image
Image
Image
kongorilla
Pro
Posts: 362
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kongorilla
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 28, 2014, 19:10
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EDIT: I now see you were following Sandy's directions to make a huge grid.

The middle image shows a grid size of 217. That's why your pixels are huge. I don't know why the pen test didn't draw at that size, unless you made the change after the pen test, or Sandy has a software limit in the pen test.

It's also typical to have the sample value close to grid size, but that's probably beside the point. Just to be safe, make it the same as your grid size for now.

That still leaves the question of why the pixels are being drawn as blanks when the controller clearly shows various values.....I dunno.

While the drawing is going, if you click SEND PEN TIP SIZE, does anything change? Start a drawing, and if it's drawing blanks, change the tip value to .01 (something crazy low) and click SEND PEN TIP SIZE just to see what happens.
sandy
Administrator
Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: May 28, 2014, 23:25
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This is infuriating. I've just loaded up the same firmware hex, with the same machine spec from your pictures, and started a drawing, and it's busy drawing a wave like nobody's business.

I've added a bunch of debug statements to the polargraph firmware, I wonder if you could try this updated firmware please?

The file is in the repo at https://github.com/euphy/polargraph_server_polarshield/blob/master/polargraph_server_polarshield_beta.cpp.hex but the source is also updated so you could try that if you are compiling from source.

Try the same stuff you already did, but with the debug console open (ctrl+C) and see what goes on, copy and paste it.

So:
1. Start up
2. start command queue
3. upload machine spec
4. set home
5. send pen width
6. select and send a few pixels

Other things:
- that firmware makes the touchscreen not work, so don't touch it.

You can email me the log directly if you'd prefer, or attach the log to the issue I've opened on the project: https://github.com/euphy/polargraph_server_polarshield/issues/7

sorry about this ongoing caper.

I almost forgot to ask: Is vector drawing working ok?

sn
stereoeric
Newbie
Posts: 22
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stereoeric
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: June 1, 2014, 17:04
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Sorry for being such a computer dunce, Sandy, but I can't figure out how to get that HEX file on Github into XLOADER. When I try and save it , it is saved as an HTML document - maybe I just replace the HTML designation with HEX?

Eric.
sandy
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Posts: 1317
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sandy
Post Re: Up and Running! But no image... yet.
on: June 1, 2014, 17:53
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Aha no problem, there's a button near the top that takes you to the raw version, the link is: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/euphy/polargraph_server_polarshield/master/polargraph_server_polarshield_beta.cpp.hex

good luck 🙂
sn
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