[Windell Oskay]

There are quite a few of these things out there, each of which has different internal wiring. The basic idea is the same as found in our flickering LEDs (see here for pictures: http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2011/does-this-led-sound-funny-to-you/ ), but there are three separate LED elements (one red, one green, one blue), each with its own wire from the tiny integrated circuit.

[Windell Oskay]

I’ve split this from the previous discussion that you were replying to. You are asking many unrelated questions, which touch on a lot of different topics — some actual tech support questions, but also some about typography and artificial intelligence that are well beyond our capabilities.

If you start with one of our examples such as wiresphere.svg or (better) signatures.svg, you should be able to download one of those example files and plot it directly without any changes. If you cannot, let’s start there and try to solve one problem at a time. (I’m not sure what “Iron Man” example you are referring to.) The signatures example is a very good one to start with, as it prints quickly and has a simple set of paths to follow. If you watch it closely, do you really see it printing multiple lines?

If you use the Trace Bitmap tool on an image (jpg or otherwise), it will produce one or more outlines around the things that you are tracing. That is its function.

Hershey Text is a text typesetting (rendering) tool. It generates stroke-based text that you type into it– it does not convert images into text. If you are generating text with Hershey Text (and have selected one of the single-line variants), please let us know more about the exact circumstances, and we should be able to help you get that working.

You ask: “How do I import a .jpg line drawing and use the Axidraw to draw that image using a single line stroke?”
This does not really make sense. A JPG image is not a line drawing — it is a bitmap; a set of pixels that are in a rectangular grid, and colored differently.

Converting an image into a line drawing is a thing that can be done in several different ways, none of which is easy. You’ve learned about outline tracing (it produces outlines), there is also center-line tracing (which tries to draw where center lines would be, typically with results of similar quality), and there is tracing by hand. These are the technologies that are available to us, if you wish to convert from an image into a line drawing. (In an ideal world, or perhaps another decade, we will hopefully have one additional tool: artificial intelligence that guesses at the intent of the person who wrote the lines, and creates a line drawing from a bitmap. This is called “trajectory reconstruction”, and is a longstanding AI problem. We do not know of any presently-existing software that can do this reliably, at any price.)

All of the text shown in our videos and example files was produced in one of three ways:

1. Using regular fonts on the computer and converting them to outlines. The vast majority of our examples are done this way. Narrow-width fonts tend to look very good this way, and fatter fonts typically get filled. This is how the text in (to name a few) the birthday card, the wedding invitation, and the envelope are done.

2. Using Hershey Text to generate the lettering. The small lettering on the AxiDraw_First.svg file is done this way (“If you can read this, AxiDraw is working.”)

3. Hand tracing a scan in a vector illustration program. That is to say, starting with a scan, and then using the Pencil tool (“Draw freehand lines”) to trace over the lines by hand. This is tedious, but possible for certain types of input that justify it. We have used this technique only in one place: on the signatures example file.

You will note that none of the examples that we show, anywhere, is made by using automatic tracing tools.

A fourth method — which we have not used anywhere in our video or example files — is to record handwriting live as you are creating it. There is a program that can record (for example) your signature as you write it (by mouse or tablet) and save it as an SVG file.

[Windell Oskay]

Interesting… thank you for the follow up. I think that I’ll have to try to figure out some workarounds for future use.

[Windell Oskay]

Hi maxotics,

I apologize for the slow follow-up here. Plotink is a set of helper routines that a few of our programs use, but we’ve never really considered adding a separate GUI for it alone. We are continuing to add routines to plotink, to try and make our different programs that interface with the EBB a little more consistent, and to improve performance where possible.

Inkscape uses python 2– which is the reason that we are still using it. We have not yet had a compelling reason to update to python 3. However, we are looking at adding additional stand-alone interfaces to control our machines (EggBot, WaterColorBot, AxiDraw) through python directly, which may be cause to start supporting both officially.

StippleGen is written in processing. However, if you would like a starting point for communicating with the EBB through Processing, please start with RoboPaint RT, which has routines for managing the serial interface already.

[Windell Oskay]

On my Mac, it took about one minute– and it leaves a window to say that it’s running open (“Working please wait”) the entire time that it’s running. If the script halts immediately, then it either failed to launch or crashed immediately. In this case, it looks like it failed to launch. 

Testing on Windows, it looks like selections with more than about ~2000 objects fails to get transferred to extensions. If you can select 1900 (or so) objects at a time, you should be able to use either extension. If I understand correctly, this is because the platform-dependent implementation of python accepts a different number of command line arguments.

[Windell Oskay]

I downloaded that file, opened it in Inkscape, selected all of the objects, and ran the extension. It took about a minute, but appears to have worked– it said that it reduced the amount of air-plotting time by 97%.  

If the total number of objects is too many, you might try selecting only part of them (Half? One quarter?) and optimize that many at a time. The longer path between the optimized parts will have a negligible impact on the overall plotting time.

[Windell Oskay]

I haven’t used that stippling program, so I can’t say much about it. Our stippling program has a built-in TSP routine to help reduce air-printing time.

If the Eggbot optimizer is not working, (or if restack does not work) it may mean that your document does not consist of discrete paths. If, for example, your file consists of many points that are all part of the same path or are grouped together, then neither of those optimizations will be able to do anything.

[Windell Oskay]

Sadly, the cancel button in Inkscape does not work whatsoever (in any context– not just in AxiDraw). I’ve urged the development team to simply remove the button.

So long as “auto-rotate when printing” is selected, a document in portrait orientation (taller than wide) will be rotated automatically when you print it– please see the user guide for more detail about how to set up letters to print in the correct orietnation.

[Windell Oskay]

You can use the cap or not– we usually do not, but it can sometimes be helpful to have additional weight.

We are working on an expanded version of Hershey Text, which is more adapted to longer blocks of text.  For the most part, it’s usually better to use a regular (but thin) font. A wider nib (e.g., Lamy M) helps to avoid double-line issues.

[Windell Oskay]

Does it have a label that you can read?

[Windell Oskay]

I think that the EggBot 2.7.1 _does not_ include the new hatch version– the latest version (the one dated March) that you downloaded is newer, and you should copy that into the Extensions folder. The latest version of plotink does include some bug fixes, so it might be nice to use that as well.

[Windell Oskay]

If you have Inkscape in both places, then there is indeed more than one copy of Inkscape on your computer. On my computer (Windows 10), it’s in the Program Files (not the x86) directory.

When copying the new files over, make sure to bring along the three files from plotink as well.

[Windell Oskay]

I don’t know what to tell you– if the old version is still there, then you definitely haven’t removed it. Perhaps you could try deleting the old version from your extensions directory, and make sure that they are gone from the menu when you restart Inkscape.

[Windell Oskay]

Can you please clarify what the situation is? Which files are you installing?  The new hatch extension for EggBot should appear as “Hatch Fill…” in the EggBot extensions menu, not the EggBot Contributed extensions menu. (Note also that you should install the latest version of plotink: https://github.com/evil-mad/plotink )

If you have replaced both eggbot_hatch.inx and eggbot_hatch.py, and have installed the files from plotink, and your menu is not updating after you restart Inkscape, then either (1) you have not copied and/or replaced the correct files or (2) you’re launching a second copy of Inkscape.

Separately, I’m not sure what USB diagnostics you are referring to– the Hatch Fill extension does not use any USB connectivity, diagnostic or otherwise.

[Windell Oskay]

(A) The IC is capable of sourcing enough current (40 mA) to destroy the resistor (typically rated for 30 mA maximum). Also, LEDs blow instantly, whereas the IC has some protection circuitry, and usually withstands being out of spec for a little while. So… no surprise.  However, it’s not unheard of for an LED to be out for more mundane reasons, such as an incomplete solder joint that opened up.

(B) That would be correct only if the current draw were constant.

(C) Diodes are very different from resistors. They drop an essentially _constant_ amount of voltage, over a wide range of currents, whereas resistors have vanishingly small voltage drop at small current.   If using diodes to drop the extra voltage, you won’t need a resistor in there.

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