Re: Multiple Machines

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#21700
ragstian
Participant

Hi.

Interesting question.
I have just tried this on a Windows7 system and it works like a charm!
The difficult part is to know which plot goes to which bot!
(If you plot the same design to the same media it would not matter.)

Some methods to get the right plot to the right bot;
For the example let’s call the bots Bot_1 and Bot_2, the Inkscape “instances” will be called “Inkscape_1” and “Inkscape_2”. The intention is to have Inkscape_1 plot to Bot_1 and Inkscape_2 plot to Bot_2.

By having only Bot_1 plugged in and starting the plot from Inkscape_1 starts the first plot to Bot_1.
Then plugg in the Bot_2 and start Inkscape_2 by clicking on the SVG file you want to plot. This starts another “instance” of Inkscape. By starting the plot from Inkscape_2 before Bot_1 finishes will get the correct plot to Bot_2.

Another method is to have the first bot on the lowest number USB port as the eggbot extension polls from a list of available ports starting with the lowest number, once it finds an EBB board it starts sending commands. (Windows will then “lock” this port until it’s no longer used or “closed” in “geek” lingo).

Unfortunately there is no way in the eggbot extension to avoid closing the port when a plot is finished.
( By use of a small python program to open the ports and keep them open until ready to plot a more advanced system can be devised,  however with my limited brain capacity and multitasking ability I reckon juggling two bots and two programs might be more than enough ;-) )

This might work differently on Linux & Mac as the “locking of ports” might work differently.

When running a standalone program talking to the eggbots the output will look like this with two bots plugged in; (The USB ports will “look like” com ports when the EBB is plugged in.)

Com ports available on your system; (‘COM1’, ‘COM4’, ‘COM10’)
testing: COM1 for EBB Board

testing: COM4 for EBB Board
Found EBB on port:  COM4
EBBv13_and_above EB Firmware Version 2.2.3
Current setting:  569.23mA.   Motor supply voltage: 11.87V.

Here the two bots are plugged in to COM4 and COM10. Com1 is a “regular” com port. while COM4 and COM10 “comes and goes” as the EBB boards are plugged in or out, one physical USB port will always be listed as COM4 and the other physical USB port always as COM10. By plugging in the bots to different ports other numbers will appear.
(Please note that it is NOT recommended by EMSL to flash the EBB board with higher versions than 2.0.1 until later versions are verified to be “bug free”)

Good Luck plotting several eggs at once!

RGDS
Ragnar