BrachioGraph#

The world’s cheapest, simplest possible pen-plotter.


BrachioGraph - arm-writer - is an easy-to-build pen-plotter, driven by a library of simple Python applications.

BrachioGraph plots cheerful, low-fi drawings, and can produce robotic sketches using a variety of drawing implements.

A BrachioGraph can be built for about €15 in an hour or so, using a Raspberry Pi computer, hobby servo motors and household items. The BrachioGraph library is published on GitHub and includes simple Python code to drive the plotter and vectorise bit-map images.

Contents#

Tutorial

Start here: build the machine, install the software, make your first drawings

How-to guides

Improve the calibration, process images, visualise plotter behaviour, build alternative designs

Reference

Guide to key classes and functions

Explanation

Understanding the mathematics, choosing hardware

From bitmap to plot via vectorisation#

'Anselmo' 'Prague'

The BrachioGraph community#

BrachioGraph benefits from contributions from the open-source community, and independently-created community resources. These include videos, brachio.me, a web version of the linedraw software used to vectorise images and 3D printed plotter components.

About the documentation#

This documentation uses the Diátaxis documentation structure