Hello
the eggbot extension in Inkscape is unable to communicate with the Egg-bot .
When I try to check the EBB Version by going to the extensions->Eggbot..., click on the Manual tab, select "Check EBB Version" from the drop down list, and click Apply. In the little dialog box that pops up I receive the following message :

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "eggbot.py", line 1403, in <module> e.affect()

File "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\inkex.py", line 215, in affect

self.effect()

File "eggbot.py", line 318, in effect

self.EggbotOpenSerial()

File "eggbot.py", line 1296, in EggbotOpenSerial

self.serialPort = self.getSerialPort()

File "eggbot.py", line 1354, in getSerialPort

serialPort = self.testSerialPort( strComPort )

File "eggbot.py", line 1323, in testSerialPort

serialPort = serial.Serial( strComPort, timeout=1 ) # 1 second timeout!

File "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\serial\serialwin32.py", line 30, in __init__

SerialBase.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

File "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\serial\serialutil.py", line 260, in __init__

self.open()

File "C:\Program Files\Inkscape\share\extensions\serial\serialwin32.py", line 56, in open

raise SerialException("could not open port %s: %s" % (self.portstr, ctypes.WinError()))

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe9 in position 23: ordinal not in range(128)

I am using Windows 7 32 Bits
I install and remove the USB driver several times but it didn't succeed
I receive no error message during the installation of the driver . When I plug in the Eggbot ,I receive a message that the USB driver was correctly installed ( at port 13)

Could someone help me ?

In advance many thanks

Jacky

There's two issues: first, Python is having a problem reporting an error to you owing to a character sett issue. (You may be running Windows with a non-US locale?)

The second issue -- the issue the error message is trying to report is that Inkscape cannot communicate with the EBB board on your Eggbot. Is your Eggbot plugged in to an external power source? There have been past reports of people having difficulty when they are either using their own power supply they have provided, or they have not plugged the Eggbot in to the power supply. The USB supplied power may not be sufficient on its own to provide the EBB board enough power. (And USB supplied power definitely cannot power the stepper motors.)

Dan

Very interesting.

Jacky, can you please say which Inkscape version you are running? And, are you using Inkscape (and/or Windows) in a different language or character set?

Hello , thanks for your quick reply

Indeed , I am using the French version of Windows 7 Ultimate (32 Bits) on my desktop .
Concerning the power source , I use the one that is provided by the kit

As an alternative , I try to connect via my laptop ( French WIndows 7 Hom premium ( 64 Bits) and I could connect to the Egg-Bot . So I try a drawing and in the middle of the writing , the pen arm stay up and remain so. But the stepper motors continue to work . After the drawing is finish ( but not completely written) I am unable to do some command through the eggbot extension for inkscape

I am using Inkscape 0.48.1 ( French version)
Concerning the Egg-Bot : I upgraded it to EBB Firmware update v2.1.5 HEX
Eggbot extensions for Inkscape, version 2.2.1

For the laptop , I see that the communication run through com 8 and for the desktop it was through com13 . I don’t know if it is related but for Arduino , it was recommended to choose a com lower than 10 ? ( can’t remember exactly). The strange thing is that although on the desktop I was unable to communicate to the eggbot through inkscape extension , I could upgrade the firmware of the eggbot with mphidflash v1.4

So to resume I have 2 problems
- Connecting the eggbot with my desktop
- Incomplete drawing with the laptop ( I try it with different drawings , so it is not related to a particular drawing)

Did you have any ideas ?

Jacky

Indeed , I am using the French version of Windows 7 Ultimate (32 Bits) on my desktop .

It sounds like we have some kind of character-set issue that appears to be in conflict with the french version. We have not come across this before, but I will look into it. Would you be willing to try some experimental software to see if we can resolve these issues on that machine?

I try to connect via my laptop ( French WIndows 7 Hom premium ( 64 Bits) and I could connect to the Egg-Bot . So I try a drawing and in the middle of the writing , the pen arm stay up and remain so. But the stepper motors continue to work . After the drawing is finish ( but not completely written) I am unable to do some command through the eggbot extension for inkscape

It sounds to me like you may have lost communication (completely) partway through the drawing, and the stepper motors were likely continuing to plot the last few commands that they received. Do you think that this might be possible, based on what you have seen? After the plot has finished, are you able to eventually plot again?

The Eggbot is able to handle a larger COM port number (like 13), but I would strongly recommend that you disconnect all other serial devices (including Arduino) while you plot, at least until we've resolved these issues.

Another thing you might want to try is to downgrade to EBB firmware 2.0.2 (http://eggbotcode.googlecode.com/files/EBF_v202.zip) I'm wondering if some of the changes in the EBB firmware in more recent version are not able to work properly on your system for some reason. Since you seem able to update the EBB firmware without problem (which is very good news) you can always go back to the latest version if this experiment doesn't work. I would think that this change (going back to 2.0.2) would only affect the 'plots half-way' problem, no the 'can't connect on desktop' problem. But you never know. It's worth a try.

My wife works at a French immersion school. I'm going to try to borrow one of their Windows PCs if they're running the French locale to see if I can replicate the problem.

Here are some more things to try with regards to the half-plotting problem:

1) What if you plot something very simple and short. Does it only plot half-way, or all the way?
2) What if you plot something very long and complicated? Does it plot for the same amount of time before failing?
3) Does Inkscape think that the plot is finished after it dies halfway through? (i.e. can you use Inkscape normally and start another plot?

*Brian

BTW, the error associated with displaying a non-US-ASCII string from ctypes.WinError() appears
to be a known problem with the pySerial package. I found a bug report for it from Dec 28, 2011.
While I cannot post the direct link -- looked down upon as spam -- here is it broken into two
parts

sourceforge.net/tracker/

index.php?func=detail&aid=3444941&group_id=46487&atid=446302

Dan

Hello Windell,
I will be happy to try some experimental software

During the week end , I will try the suggestion of EmbeddedMan.
With windows 7 ultimate , I have the possibility to swith the user 's language . I will see if it solve the problem

However for the next 2 week ,I will not have the laptop . So I need first to resolve the problem of communication with the egg-bot on my desktop

Did you have any recommendations ? ( during the test , the only USB connection is the keyboard and the mouse ( with the exemption of the eggbot))

Jacky

I could also run windows XP in a virtual machine ( windows 7 feature) . Do you think it is worth trying ?

Jacky

I have a couple of concerns right now. One of them is the french-language issue; I do not know if this is the fundamental problem (that is, if there is a bug in our software due to the french language) or if this is only a secondary problem caused by the communications glitch.

Second, there could be an actual hardware reason that communications are not working. Using a virtual machine might fix language issues, but can complicate debugging of hardware issues. It may well be worth trying anyway.

Another virtual machine that you might be able to try is virtualbox with ubuntu; this is all free software that can be installed within Windows.

Hello Windell
Could you tell me more about what you have in mind concerning hardware problem ?
Is there a way to check ?
I never had problem with USB devices . With arduino , it is working fine although slow if I compare with the laptop
If it is a hardware problem , it will not be solved by virtualisation ?

For Ubuntu , did I need to make a dual boot or just add it to windows ?

In terms of hardware, your computer *can* see the Eggbot, since it responds when you plug it in. However, there could be an intermittent failure, or some other kind of (as yet undetected) failure, since you haven't gotten everything working yet. Just trying to make sure that everything works for you.

As to the pySerial bug with displaying the localized Windows error message, I believe all we need to do is apply pySerial's SVN revision 441 to correct the error reporting issue. Then we'll be able to see what the underlying error is that Windows is reporting back to pySerial. Change was to use %r in place of %s for the formatting strings in serialwin32.py,

pyserial.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pyserial/trunk/pyserial/serial/

serialwin32.py?r1=440&r2=441&pathrev=441&

With those changes, we can then see in French what error is being reported.

Dan

Here's the corrected lines from serialwin32.py. The line numbers may differ from what's shipped with the Eggbot extensions: these line numbers are for the pySerial code as of 28 December 2011.
Each change is the same: replace the "%s" formatting directive with a "%r".

Line 56

raise SerialException("could not open port %r: %r" % (self.portstr, ctypes.WinError()))

line 183

raise ValueError("Cannot configure port, some setting was wrong. Original message: %r" % ctypes.WinError())

line 232

raise SerialException("ReadFile failed (%r)" % ctypes.WinError())

line 242

raise SerialException("ReadFile failed (%r)" % ctypes.WinError())

and line 261

raise SerialException("WriteFile failed (%r)" % ctypes.WinError())

Yes, it looks like this issue was only caught *very* recently in pyserial.

I'm in the awkward position of being away from my Eggbot right now, but I've uploaded a new version of the Eggbot extensions installer for Windows that incorporates this patch. This is an _experimental_ version, which you might be willing to try.

http://code.google.com/p/eggbotcode/downloads/detail?name=EB_Ext_2_2_2_r3.exe