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Moving _once_ when power is plugged in, but not buzzing, does not suggest a problem, with this version of the controller board.
Can you please clarify why it is that you cannot get past the warning? It’s a warning message, not an error, and does not prevent anything else from working. If it’s just bothering you so much that you cannot get past it, then let’s temporarily disable that warning, so that you can move along. Otherwise, just ignore it for the moment.
You are correct that there are no directions in the user guide for connecting or replacing the pen-lift motor.
The “first two steps” are connecting the cable and installing the pen clip. That is why the directions there are for how to connect the cable and install the pen clip.
*That* may actually be the problem. The white plastic arm is driven by the pen-lift servo motor, and it should not start moving when the machine is first plugged in. The pen-lift servo motor is a component that wears out over time, and buzzing when the machine first turns on may indicate that it is not working correctly. When it fails, it can sometimes draw excessive current, producing a low-voltage warning.
I would recommend to follow along with the AxiDraw User Guide for the general steps towards making your first plot, including testing to see if the pen lifts up and down correctly, and if it can make a plot correctly. If it does not move in XY when you try to make a plot, then try disconnecting the servo cable, and see if that makes a difference.
You say that “the stepper motor starts moving”, but can you please tell me if the XY movement of the machine is working correctly?
It is possible that the power supply is indeed producing a low voltage — if that is the case, then the power supply may indeed be failing (In your other message, you indicated that this is an older unit, and power supplies do sometimes fail), but then we would expect that the stepper motors are not moving correctly.
If the XY motion is working correctly, then it seems like the voltage sensor is not working correctly. If so, there is a hidden setting to disable the check, which will suppress the warning message. Please let me know what the situation is, and we’ll go from there.
The USB lamp should go on and off when you have communication; this is normal.
Does the 3.3 V lamp stay on when you have _only_ the USB connector plugged in (not power) and wiggle the cable back and forth?
And, I presume that the machine is not moving, is that correct?
That isn’t anything to be concerned about. It’s the 3.3 V light that needs to stay on.
Yes, and if that doesn’t help, then we should swap out your EBB.
This is still a connection difficulty. If you have a different USB cable to try, I’d recommend trying that. And, if you are using any kind of USB hub or adapter, I’d recommend trying a direct connection instead.
You might also try disconnecting the power supply, disconnecting the USB cable, and then try connecting only with the USB cable until the connection is working reliably. You might also check if wiggling the USB cable (with power disconnected) causes the “3.3 V” power light on the power light on the EBB to turn on and off. If so, that suggests that the cable or board needs to be replaced.
For the difference between a rectangle versus a square, that is likely map projection, because you are wrapping a flat image around a sphere or egg shape: https://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Eggbot_Quality_Troubleshooting#Map_Projection
Which model of EggBot is this?
It looks like there’s some kind of USB communication error. This is what you might expect if, for example, the USB cable were unplugged (even slightly) during a plot. I’d suggest unplugging the EggBot from both power and USB and restarting your computer.
The red lights do not indicate any kind of error; they only indicate which direction each motor was turning most recently.
If it’s plotting twice, that generally means that you have two paths in the artwork that you are drawing. The two typical causes are that you either have two copies of each object on top of each other, or the path that you are plotting is actually an outline.
Duplicates usually happen when you copy and paste something in the same place. Outlines usually happen when you use outline tracing or convert an outlined object to paths.
The “ugly” error message is due to an unhandled linux-specific situation in an underlying software library that the AxiDraw software uses. (We have submitted a patch to fix their error message, but it hasn’t been accepted yet.)
What the message *should* say instead of that is something like “Failed to connect to AxiDraw.” Since you’re seeing a difference versus fully unconnected, I’d recommend resetting the AxiDraw and/or restarting your computer. Unplug it from both power and USB, and then connect it by USB alone until you’re making a good connection again. If that doesn’t help, unplug it again and try restarting your computer before plugging in USB again.
Yes, of course you can trace a signature — The article that I linked to says so as well.
That option was removed some time ago. The current functionality is as though that option were selected, always.
There’s no particularly good way to do that starting with an image. The best way is to capture the signature directly as it is written.
https://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Capturing_Handwriting#Capturing_a_signature_with_jSignature
If you’d like the current version, then please do update to the current version, which works with Inkscape 1.0+.
