Skycam features added to improve Drawbot

I’ve replaced the old & busted “load bobbins” with a much more convenient “jog motors”. This way you can test each motor separately. You can even jog it a lot to load your bobbins. It used to be you had to tweak the firmware to load the bobbins or do it by hand. Which was the lesser evil? The question is now moot.

I’ve also added an “invert” checkbox in the jog motor control panel, just in case you decided to do it by hand and got the bobbin loaded backwards. …or maybe you wired the motors in a wierd way and they were running in reverse. Whatever! Both problems are now gone.

Get the master branch from github and run the DrawbotGUI.jar to see the changes. Don’t forget to update your firmware! (You will not lose your GUID.)

I think in the next update I’m going to merge the configuration screens to make setup easier. Something with a picture so it makes more intuitive sense. Can you easily load an image into the background of a dialog box in java? I haven’t even figured out how to make many text inputs the same size.

How would you feel about being able to give your Drawbot a name? “Drawbot #26” sounds so cold.

On the 11th of August I’ll be bringing the Drawbot to the Life Tree fundraiser party in Vancouver where I’ll have some prints ready and I’ll be drawing on-site. I’m also bringing it to the Super Happy Hacker House at the VHS on the 18th of August, and again to the Vancouver New Forms Festival 2012 september 13-16.

I said I’d draw 10 copies of the Burning Man logo in advance and it turns out I’ve only got 9 sheets left. That means between test prints, sales, and personal projects I’ve now drawn 91 giant pictures of steadily improving quality on my Drawbot. That’s over 50km of line!