[clohl]

So I followed the instructions from build to installation to “Hello World”… which is where I got to the point of finding this weirdness:  I couldn’t get the servo to lift in the step to insert the sharpie when I wrote this post.

I eventually tried to use the “Toggle” to lift the pen, and then manually enabled the motors to start the plot since I couldn’t get the “pen up” to work per the instructions.  The pen never lowered, and the servo stayed activated the entire time.

That said, I was able to get the “pen up” command to work last night by doing a full shutdown/restart, disconnecting the eggbot from USB & Power and starting clean.  That didn’t conclude the issue however.  If you touch any other settings after lifting the pen, the servo reverts to a non-responsive state, and in some cases simply jittered up and down like a caffeinated kid for no apparent reason (e.g. I was not even in Inkscape – I was looking at your driver code on Github to see if I could call outside of Inkscape, and the servo started bouncing)

I found the following steps FINALLY worked to get a successful plot:

1) Connect USB & power

2) Reset EBB

3) Start Inkscape

4) Load SVG

5) Close blank Inkscape window.

6) Open EggBot Control

7) Open Manual tab

8) Lift Pen

9) Enable motors

10) Plot

At this point the EggBot works normally as expected.  It’s important to note you cannot touch any other settings, or run ANY other manual commands or the pen either will not lift, will stay lifted during the plot, or will jitter constantly.

I goofed the first time by going in and manually running the egg stepper for 2000 steps to catch a video of the print.  That borked the whole thing and I had to start over because the pen wouldn’t come down again after that – and then began to jitter up and down rapidly.  Once I finally got the servo to quit jittering (took 4 or 5 resets – even persisted a power cycle) I ran thru these steps again and the EggBot was stable for 3 prints.  I gave up around then trying to triangulate the problem since it was about 2am.

I guess I’m not sure why sending a command to the motors would wreck communication to the servo.  I can’t tell what’s misbehaving really at this point – bad code, bad servo, bad board… I can’t tell.  Sorry I’m usually better at isolating problems.

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