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The LEDs are almost never actually “bad” — in a bag of 1000, I would expect to find zero duds. However, they can be damaged in the installation process, either in the stage of bending out the leads (most likely situation in this case) or during soldering. That’s one of the reasons that we include a few extra in the standard LED packs for Peggy.
For the isolated LED, check the soldering– most likely issue. Could also be backwards or damaged– may need to be replaced.
For the colums out, there appears to be a break or scratch in the vertical wire (trace) on the back side of the pcb. You may be able to see the scratch, but in any case you can repair it by adding an extra wire (e.g., a wire lead from a resistor) across the break or between the two LED leads that are supposed to be connected.
The “flowroot” is the box around flowed text. That is to say, when you type text into a box, that box has a representation in your SVG file that is the “flowroot.”
The most likely case is that you’ve still got some text in your document there that’s in a box. That could be, for example, an extra empty (or nearly empty) text box that’s invisible in your document somewhere.You should be able to clean up the document by selecting Edit > Select all in all layers and then Path > Object to path.If that does not immediately fix it, your flowtext may be currently grouped with something else; you may need to ungroup the objects before converting to path.Please let me know how it goes.(If you’re interested, you can also open the XML editor (Edit > XML Editor) to browse through the document and find the svg:flowtext element, to see what it’s attached to.)First: there is essentially no chance that you messed up the servo motor on your own. Historically, these servos have been extremely reliable; I’ve never heard of one being ruined by following our normal setup routine. However, it is very plausible that you just got one of the “bad eggs” from that batch– The servo factory has admitted fault here.
Second: As a servo motor comes from the factory, its output shaft can be facing in any direction (within the 2/3 of a turn that it can face). Because we don’t know its initial orientation, we move the shaft through its range, to point it in the center of its range. We *also* need to have the servo horn pointing in the correct direction. These are separate requirements, so there are two steps. IF you are certain of the initial orientation of the servo motor shaft, you can skip the first step. Since you’ve already got the software working, you can do this with your replacement: Use the EggBot software to “raise” and “lower” the new servo, before the horn is in place. Once it’s in the “down” position, press the horn on, in the correct orientation for the “pen down” position.It will fit, but it will not wrap around seamlessly. Depending on what you are drawing, this may be optimal or suboptimal.
That will *probably* not work. The larger vertical range (1044 vs 800) means that you’ll be asking the pen to go further “north” and “south” (using a globe model), and it will likely bump into one or both of the egg couplers.
There is not a fixed relationship between the template and the number of inches that artwork will take up. That relationship depends both on the size and shape of the object that you are drawing upon.The units on the template — pixels, not inches — relate to the motion of the motors. A full revolution of one of the motors is 3200 steps, shown on the screen as 3200 pixels, which gives 360 degrees of motion. You can think of this like latitude and longitude on a globe. 360 degrees around the equator is still one full revolution. However, the amount of distance along the equator is different on globes of different size. Similarly, lines of constant latitude are different lengths, depending on the latitude.First off, your page size should be 3200 x 800 pixels, not 3400 x 800. You may want to start with the EggBot template as an example.
Can you please say what the issue is with changing the dimensions? At the “standard” 90 pixels per inch, that template works out to ~35.5″ wide– it should not get to 40+ inches.> Sorry to differ with your previous experience with other customers, but if I can read 4+ volts at the base leads of the LEDs in the correct polarity, and they do not light, I would have to believe the LEDs are at fault.
I did not say (nor intentionally imply) otherwise. I absolutely believe that these LEDs are dead. We have helped hundreds of people build and debug issues their BulbDial kits, and we do know that LEDs do sometimes get damaged in the process. That’s one of the reasons that we’re happy to replace parts when needed. Five getting damaged in the installation is surprising, but _certainly_ not unprecedented.I also stand by my statement about the LEDs arriving in good condition. Test, for example, the LEDs in your green and red bags. Test your replacements when they arrive. (And if you do find any dead, we would _definitely_ want to hear about it!)> I suppose there could still be a current delivery issue even if I can read voltage with a voltmeter whereas under the 100-some-odd milliamp load there is an issue, but alas, I digress.I’m not sure where the “100-some-odd milliamp load” part came from. There isn’t anything like that in the kit. Those LEDs are not designed to withstand 100 mA, and can easily be burnt out if you put that much current through them.> I’m very curious how you propose to repair a cold joint, if not with heat?I did not propose anything of the sort. What I said is that “We recommend *never* to reheat/reflow a solder joint unless it is known to need repair.”Yes, if you do have a known cold solder joint, then reflowing it (well, flowing it for the first time) is the correct way to fix it. But reflowing _every single solder joint_ is one of those few consistent ways that our kits can get “totalled.” (That is, damaged such that it becomes much easier to start over than to repair it, for example by delaminating traces and pads from the circuit board.)> How do you replace parts if not be reheating and removing them? This advice sounds absolutely bizarre to me.Again, I suggested nothing of the sort. I suggested that only known-damaged components should be removed.>I guess I’d like to see if it’s possible to source the replacements elsewhere in case customer service isn’t willing[…]I am the person that designed the Bulbdial kit, and one of the two people that do our tech support and customer service. We’ve already both talked about it and _are_ willing to send you replacement blue LEDs and/or sell you a blue ring with parts at a significant discount if you’d like to start over (most people at this stage prefer that direction). However, you’ll still have to contact us by e-mail or contact form, because our forums are not a good place to discuss things like e-mail and shipping addresses, and so forth.As far as sourcing elsewhere, you certainly can look up the specs, but we would strongly recommend using parts from the very same LED batch for a reasonable color, intensity, and angle matching. (Ideally, just let us send you the replacement parts, so you can get up and running again, and have a nicely matched clock).The “DOA” failure rate of the actual LEDs is very low– if we were to install 1000 in a panel, we would expect zero failures. However, they can be damaged by overheating or by physical stress.
Is it possible that your soldering iron tip is not *shiny*? If your tip is not tinned well, that can lead to poor wetting, and may mean that you need to heat the joints for significantly longer than the 1 second (or so) that we recommend. We recommend *never* to reheat/reflow a solder joint unless it is known to need repair. We’ve had a lot of experience helping people get their kits up and running, and from that experience we can say that reheating components and removing parts (not certain to be damaged) are the two most common ways that components and the circuit board itself get damaged.You can download the Bulbdial electrical schematic (PDF) from our documentation page:The relevant part is the LED matrix, visible on the first page of the schematic. From this you might be able to see (for example) that if D16 were damaged or missing, D12, D13, D14, and D15 would be expected to light dimly. However, if there are short circuits or more than one or two damaged components, it can get pretty difficult to identify where the issue is.In cases like this what we normally do is suggest that you do is to contact customer service directly ( http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/contact ). We can send you some replacement blue LEDs, or sell you a replacement blue board with its components at a significant discount.mlowe.115 is correct: you can just delete the outline after adding the hatch fill.
After performing the hatch fill on an object, the new fill is grouped with the original (outline) object, so you’ll need to ungroup them in order to delete the outline.After ungrouping, if you are unable to select the original (outline) object because the fill is in front, you can click on the “hatch” object and select from the Object menu “Lower” to bring the outline forward.We don’t have a good way to post pictures here, but we do have a flicker group ( https://www.flickr.com/groups/evilmadscience/ ) that we maintain for the purposes of posting pictures.
Are you getting any kind of error message on your computer?
We have heard of this happening in several different case like this (but with an error message) when someone was using a USB extension cable.
If you are not getting an error message, then it might be the case that you have an intermittent power connetion. If the power is disconnected (but not USB), the motors will stop working but you will not get an error message. You might try wiggling the power cord while printing to see if that makes any difference.
Also: I saw that you tried to post this message to the user group as well. I did not forward it to the group since I’ve already followed up here.
First, always try a second time when you get that message.
Things almost always “just work” on the mac, so if they don’t (by the second try) it’s probably a hardware problem.
Try connecting just the EBB to your computer, without the power supply. Do any lights come on?Next, check for communication (you can still leave the power supply off). Use the “Manual” tab in EggBot Control, and select from the menu “Check EBB Version.” This will let you test the connection a little faster.
If you can’t get a connection, try a different USB cable if you have one, and try a different USB port on your computer if you have one. If you have access to another computer, you might try that as well. If it’s not working we’ll need to replace your EBB– please contact customer service directly.
