A couple of months ago I decided I needed a project I could finish as the watering system seems like it will be forever on the horizon. I’ve wanted to make a vplotter for a while + seemed like it would be something fairly easily finished while giving me experience I could carry forward to the other projects on my plate.
VPlotters are a type of computer controlled drawing device, where the pen is hung vertically from two motors against a wall, resulting in a ‘v’ from the two control points to the pen. An early example is hektor, a graffiti bot that draws using spray paint on walls. These types of drawing machines, due to their simplicity compared to cnc-esque plotters, are fairly common projects. A quick non-authoritative list includes –
- Bill Ola Rasmussen’s VPlotter – No hardware examples, but a great source for the math behind the drawing
- Make Magazine’s drawbot from their “Make It Last” series – The image above comes from posts describing this bot
- AS220’s Drawbot
- Muralizer – Interesting because the strings run up from the floor.
- SADbot – Many times the drawing is randomized in some way, in that case based on the weather.
Using this as a starting point, my design has a couple of key aspects. First, I’m not going to have any sort of pen-up feature. Any drawing I make will have to be one continuous line. My rationale is to minimize the complexity and the types of drawings I plan on making don’t require it (more on this later…). I also plan on making it wireless, with the controlling computer not physically connected to the controller. Two reasons here – for some of my plans, I expect this to run continuously and my ‘always-on’ computer is not near where I hope to hang the plotter. Also, it should help develop some rf experience I can carry forward to other projects.
I’m fairly far along with this project already (just quite behind on blog updates). Next post to come will be on the math and some theory.