Two R2D2’s

This last weekend, when I should have been working, I was having a blast drawing tiny drawings with my tiny drawing robot.  Under the kind and benevolent tutelage of TechNinja, I improved my Arduino and Processing sketches, started a repository for the software/firmware for the Tiny CNC drawing robot, and merged his pull request to add some code to make this little robot compatible with the CNC server software written to run the WaterColorBot and EggBot.

Above are probably the best drawings I’ve managed with my little robot to date.  The drawing is about 2 inches tall.  The one on the left is from a single “pass” of the drawing robot, the second is from the robot drawing the same picture three times in a row.  I was quite surprised that the robot was able to draw the same picture several times and repeat the drawing so well.

An image of a weeping angel is itself a weeping angel

This drawing, of a weeping angel from Doctor Who, is also about 2 inches tall.  This image wasn’t the best topic to draw – but my daughter specifically requested it.  I found a full color JPG/bitmap picture online, imported it into Inkscape, and converted it into a single-color vector graphic for the robot.

A robot drawn robot turtle

This one is a drawing of a robot turtle, from the game “Robot Turtles.”  I pledged to help support this awesome game on Kickstarter and it arrived a little before Christmas.  While it didn’t get immediate attention on Christmas day, we played the game for the first time a few days later and my daughter loved it.  I think it was really smart to design the game with “unlockables” which give the game a gentle learning curve to start and a challenge later on right when the players start to get complacent.  I pulled the JPG/bitmap image from the Robot Turtles community page, turned it into a two-tone vector image using Inkscape, and fired the drawing robot.

I also tried to draw a Death Star, but it turned out terrible.  The SVG version of the image I found was terrible and the robot drawing was even worse.