Planet Arduino

The whole purpose of machine automation is to eliminate human needs and errors. A CNC machine doesn’t get tired, doesn’t need breaks, and performs a task exactly the same way every time. But what if that weren’t true? What if machines experienced human emotions and let it affect their work like we do? That’s the idea behind Devlin Macpherson’s Nervous Drawing Machine.

By all outward appearances, this is just a standard two-axis pen plotter. Like many laser cutters and 3D printers, it has a stepper motors controlled by an Arduino board that follows g-code commands. A command might be something like “move the X axis 2mm to the right.” By chaining hundreds or thousands of those commands together, the machine can follow complex toolpaths that form letters, symbols, pictures, or anything else. Macpherson equipped the pen plotter with a continuously fed roll of paper so it can draw indefinitely.

Under normal conditions, the machine plots row after row of little squares. A video camera points at the plotter as it works and the video feed streams through a website. And this is where things get interesting. If someone visits the website and watches the stream, the pen plotter becomes nervous about being observed. It will then start to make mistakes, like drawing scribbles instead of squares. Once the visitor leaves the website and the machine is unobserved once again, it will return to drawing perfect rows of squares.

Macpherson built the Nervous Drawing Machine for his thesis project titled ICFWYWM (I Can’t Focus When You’re Watching Me). Like all good interactive art installations, it reflects the human condition.

The post This pen plotter gets nervous when observed appeared first on Arduino Blog.

In their quest to create a portable CNC plotter, Instructables user tuenhidiy combined several PVC pieces with a couple of motors to build the P-CNC Plotter. The small machine — which was designed to resemble a quadruped robot — features an Arduino Uno and a Gbrl control shield at its heart that takes incoming G-code and translates it into motor movements. The X axis consists of a single NEMA-17 stepper motor that actuates a threaded rod to slide the rest of the device along a path. 

There is a central PVC assembly that holds both the threaded and smooth rods for both the X and Y axes while letting the entire thing move. Tuenhidiy was able to repurpose the linear gliding mechanism from a CD player as the Z axis, thus letting the pen or other drawing utensil go up and down with great precision. A set of three A4988 stepper motor driver modules provide the current to both the NEMA 17 motors and CD drive components. 

Images are drawn within the vector-based program Inkscape, and they normally include text, basic shapes, and splines that the toolhead can follow. G-code was exported from Inkscape by using an extension, and this could then be sent to the Gbrl-enabled Arduino. To read more about this project, you can check out tuenhidiy’s write-up here.

The post The P-CNC Plotter is a DIY drawing machine ‘disguised as a quadruped robot’ appeared first on Arduino Blog.

Artist Jo Fairfax has created automated drawing machines inspired by carefully manicured Japanese rock gardens, AKA zen gardens. The mesmerizing artwork uses magnets and motors that move underneath a bed of iron filings, generating soothing shapes as viewers come near via motion sensor.  

An Arduino Uno is utilized for the device, or rather devices, and you can see a square “magnet garden” in the first video below, automatically producing a circular pattern. A (non-square) rectangular garden sketches a sort of snake/wave pattern in the second clip. 

The build is reminiscent of sand drawing machines that rotate a metal marble through magnetic force, but does away with a visible source of movement as the filings react directly to the magnetic field as it’s applied.

An Arduino Uno is programmed to set off a mechanism with integrated magnets below the platform of iron filings. each time a viewer approaches the machine, it starts to ‘draw’ and agitate the black particles, moving them around the platforms. Slowly the drawings become three dimensional and the sense of the magnets’ tracing becomes visible. 
 
The charged iron filings create varying geometric clusters that shape the zen gardens. The drawing machines reveal the forces acting on them, imitating grass and sand that react to the natural force of the wind. the gesture of the viewer’s movement that activates the machine coupled with the magnetic power makes the artwork become a dialogue of forces… elegant and subtle, just like a zen garden.

Artist Jo Fairfax has created automated drawing machines inspired by carefully manicured Japanese rock gardens, AKA zen gardens. The mesmerizing artwork uses magnets and motors that move underneath a bed of iron filings, generating soothing shapes as viewers come near via motion sensor.  

An Arduino Uno is utilized for the device, or rather devices, and you can see a square “magnet garden” in the first video below, automatically producing a circular pattern. A (non-square) rectangular garden sketches a sort of snake/wave pattern in the second clip. 

The build is reminiscent of sand drawing machines that rotate a metal marble through magnetic force, but does away with a visible source of movement as the filings react directly to the magnetic field as it’s applied.

An Arduino Uno is programmed to set off a mechanism with integrated magnets below the platform of iron filings. each time a viewer approaches the machine, it starts to ‘draw’ and agitate the black particles, moving them around the platforms. Slowly the drawings become three dimensional and the sense of the magnets’ tracing becomes visible. 
 
The charged iron filings create varying geometric clusters that shape the zen gardens. The drawing machines reveal the forces acting on them, imitating grass and sand that react to the natural force of the wind. the gesture of the viewer’s movement that activates the machine coupled with the magnetic power makes the artwork become a dialogue of forces… elegant and subtle, just like a zen garden.