XY Plotter

XY Plotter

Spiel und Objekt besitzt drei XY Plotter.

Given the age of the hardware, a lot of the documentation is out of date. This article will help you getting the device to work with your WINDOWS computer.

Assembly Instructions

If, for some reason, a device broke or you need to reassemble it, here is a link to the | official assembly guide

General Hardware Specifications

• They are controlled by a custom Arduino UNO compatible board with Custom Firmware.
• The two stepper motors are driven by a 12V external Power supply
• Some of them might have an additional Servo motor to control a Pen or a Magnet Holder.

Getting it to work

• Connect the XY Plotter using a Micro-USB Cable.
• Make sure the XY Plotter's 12V power supply is plugged in and that power is turned on (in addition to the USB Connection).
• Download the software "mDraw" either from the official Plotter website or from the Spiel und Objekt Buschcloud [1].

using the mDraw Firmware (Recommended)

• open mDraw
• In the drop-down Menu on the top right, select XY-Plotter
• Make sure the Plotter is connected, the COM port should be connected in the lower right hand side of the software.
• Click Connect
• To apply the mDraw firmware, click Update Firmware
• Wait for the Firmware to Download onto the board
• Profit!
  • Double-Clicking in the middle of the drawing area should move the Plotter to that point.
  • Clicking on the house Icon should move the Plotter back to its initial 0,0 Position
  • Feel free to explore the software. The plotters should work Out-Of-The-Box with the default settings of the Software. Please document if you Settings changed setting for other groups potentially using the Plotter. Here's an image of the setting as of 14.02.23:

using the official gitHub Firmware (Not Recommended)

• download the XY Plotter firmware from the GitHub page or use the one that comes in the Spiel und Objekt Buschcloud folder.
• Open the Arduino file: XY-Plotter-2.0-master\software\GCodeParser.ino
• Make sure the Plotter is connected, then select the COM port as usual in the Arduino software.
• Contrary to the instructions on the official Firmware GitHub website, we selected "Arduino Uno" as our board type for success.
• Upload the code to the controller board
• The code is very, very slow, but it works. You can possibly adjust the values in the code itself to speed it up.
• we really recommend using the mDraw Firmware, it is much much faster.

Using GCode

Once you have

Project related Code

Be:B.E.R.N.D.

The following code connects a xy-plotter to unity and also simulates the movement of the plotter in the game view. A simple white plane represents the scale of the plotter and a white cube its movement. The movement is controlled by the arrow keys.

GitHub [2]