Chiplotle
Chiplotle is an HPGL plotter driver that implements and extends the HPGL (Hewlett-Packard Graphics Language) plotter control language. It provides direct control of your HPGL-aware hardware via a standard usb<->serial port interface. Chiplotle is also a general purpose vector drawing library with functions for creating and transforming shapes, which can then be sent directly to your HPGL plotter for printing.
Chiplotle is written and maintained by Víctor Adán and Douglas Repetto.
- Main web page: http://sites.music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/
- Documentation: https://chiplotle.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
- More documentation: http://sites.music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/manual/chapters/tutorial/intro.html
Use
Connect to plotter to computer with usb.
Start the plotter.
Wait! until the plotter is fully running.
Activate the venv you made.
In Linux:
$ source FOLDERNAME/bin/activate
In Windows (using Powershell):
$ FOLDERNAME\Scripts\Activate.ps1
Now you can start chiplotle:
$ chiplotle3
It should automatically detect the plotter...
If it doesn't, you can try to turn the plotter on and off, or load paper.
Once the plotter is detected, you can send a HPGL file to plotter:
plotter.write_file('FILENAME.hpgl')
When you're done, close chiplotle with:
exit()
Install
Install pip, venv
First install pip and the virtual environment python module, if you don't have them yet.
On Linux:
$ sudo apt install python3-pip $ sudo apt install python3-venv
On Mac and Windows:
follow the instructions at https://www.python.org/.
Make a virtual environment
On Linux and Mac:
$ python3 -m venv FOLDERNAME
For example:
$ python3 -m venv plotter-venv
On Windows:
py -m venv FOLDERNAME
For example:
$ py -m venv plotter-venv
Activate the virtual environment
On Linux and Mac:
$ source FOLDERNAME/bin/activate
On Windows (using Powershell):
FOLDERNAME\Scripts\Activate.ps1
You can exit again by writing deactivate.
Install Chiplotle
Install Chiplotle inside this virtual environment (the Python library to speak HPGL to the plotter):
$ pip install Chiplotle3
Run Chiplotle
See #Use.
Errors
Windows: Script Execution Policy
See: https://www.makeuseof.com/enable-script-execution-policy-windows-powershell/
Mac: ImportError: module not found "imp"
?
Windows: "port" not found (?)
File "C:\Users\aless\OneDrive\Desktop\PENPLOTTER_venv\lib\site-packages\serial\serialutil.py", line 268, in port
raise ValueError('"port" must be None or a string, not {}'.format(type(port)))
ValueError: "port" must be None or a string, not <class 'int'>
Raspberry Pi
Numpy error:
libopenblas.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Install the missing library:
$ sudo apt install libopenblas-dev