/PolarSketcher

An arm that can sketch out drawings

Primary LanguagePython

Polar Sketcher

The polar Sketcher is a somewhat compact robotic arm plotter.

The motivation is to have a somewhat simple and cheap design to create a 2D plotter. It is also meant to not occupy a lot of space when idle as you don't need an entire XY CNC setup.

Demo Video

Take a look a the journey of this build (without looking at commits) https://youtu.be/corrBt9IMOM

Upload PolarSketcherFirmware

The firmware of this project is designed to run on an esp32. To upload the code from the command line run the following command from the PolarSketcherFirmware directory:

platformio run --target upload --environment uno

You may want to change the serial_port option in the platformio.ini file. The current one is meant for the raspberrypi when using the GPIO serial connection.

To download platformio in the first place run:

curl -fsSL -o get-platformio.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/platformio/platformio-core-installer/master/get-platformio.py

python3 get-platformio.py

Optional software

There is a feature still in development to allow for the storing of drawings in order to pick up where you left off. for this a local mongoDB is needed, for development se this to run mongodb locally:

docker run -p 27017:27017 -v $PWD/mongodb:/data/db mongo:latest