Installing software

Eggbot is designed to work well on Mac, Windows, and Linux computers. To use it, you'll need to install certain software on your computer.

The Eggbot software actually consists of several different parts:

1. Inkscape, the superb freeware vector graphics application
2. The Eggbot extensions for Inkscape, which let you control the Eggbot from within Inkscape
3. The Eggbot USB driver, on Windows systems.

Optionally but suggested, you may also want to download the set of example files from the EggBotCode Google Code site.

The particulars of installation depend on the operating system:

Mac

1. Download and install the latest version of Inkscape (version 0.48.2 or newer) from the download page at Inkscape.org.

• Install Inkscape in the default location, the main "Applications" folder.
• Note that inkscape is an X11 application, and will require that X11 or XQuartz is installed on your Mac.

For MacOS 10.6-10.8 (Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion), download and install the latest release of XQuartz.

For MacOS 10.5 (Leopard), download and install the "Final Leopard Release," from the XQuartz site.

For MacOS 10.4, use the X11 that came on your system installer disks.

• If you need additional assistance for installing Inkscape, you may be able to find good advice at the the Inkscape wiki and/or the Inkscape Forums. Please do not use Inkscape support resources for Eggbot-specific issues-- see note below about troubleshooting.

2. Download and install the Eggbot Extensions for Inkscape

• Recommended method: Download the Mac installer package from the EggBotCode Google Code site. Run the installer (a standard Mac installer package) to install the Eggbot extensions. The installer requires MacOS 10.4 or newer.
• Alternate method, Manual installation: Download the latest version of the Inkscape extension (not the mac installer) from the EggBotCode Google Code site. Copy the entire contents of the Eggbot software archive to /Applications/Inkscape.app/Contents/Resources/extensions/ and restart Inkscape.

Note for MacOS 10.7: There is a known conflict between Inkscape 0.48.1, in that extensions (even the built-in ones) do not work under Lion without patches. The Mac installer package contains a patch that works around this issue; manual installation is not recommended.

Note for MacOS 10.4: You may also need to install Python 2.5, if your system does not already have it.

• The "Eggbot" submenu should appear in the Extensions menu of Inkscape after you restart Inkscape.

3. Troubleshooting

Your software should now be set up to work correctly.

• If you encounter difficulty installing the Eggbot extensions for Inkscape (or with plotting, in the next stage), please request assistance through the Eggbot mailing list or forum, which you can find on our front page.
• If there is any chance that a problem you encounter is specific to Eggbot software or hardware, it is important that you do not directly seek assistance through Inkscape's support resources. You're much more likely to get your problem solved by asking people who know about Eggbot. And, we'd like the Inkscape team to be ready to help us when we do encounter Inkscape-specific issues.

Windows

1. Download and install the latest version of Inkscape (we recommend version 0.48.2) from the download page at Inkscape.org.

• Install Inkscape in the default location, the main "Program Files" folder (or "Program Files (x86)" on newer systems).
• If you need additional assistance for installing Inkscape, you may be able to find good advice at the the Inkscape wiki and/or the Inkscape Forums. Please do not use Inkscape support resources for Eggbot-specific issues-- see note below about troubleshooting.

2. Download and install the Eggbot extensions for Inkscape

• Recommended method: Download the latest version of the Windows installer package from the EggBotCode Google Code site. Run the installer (a standard Windows installer package) to install the Eggbot extensions. The installer has been tested to work from XP through Win7.
• Alternate method, Manual installation: Download the latest version of the Inkscape extension (not the Windows installer) from the EggBotCode Google Code site. Copy the entire contents of the Eggbot software archive into (Program files)\Inkscape\share\extensions\ and restart Inkscape.
• The "Eggbot" submenu should appear in the Extensions menu of Inkscape after you restart Inkscape.

3. Download and install the Windows USB driver for Eggbot

• This driver is necessary for Windows to recognize the Eggbot USB device.
• Recommended method: Download the latest version of the Windows USB Driver installer package from the EggBotCode Google Code site. It is called the UBWDriverInstaller_v10.zip. Unzip the file, and run the USBDriverInstaller.exe application. Click on the Installer Drivers button. When it is finished, close the application. The USB driver installer has been tested to work from XP through Windows 7 (32 and 64bit). Note that Windows (by default) hides the ".exe" extension of the filename, so after you unzip the downloaded file, double click on the USBDriverInstaller application even if it doesn't have .exe at the end of its name.)
• When you plug in your EggBot to your computer, the drivers will already be installed, and you can tell Windows to search for the drivers (XP) or allow the drivers to be installed when you connect (Vista and Windows 7).
• Alternate method: Download the USB driver itself from [1]. Extract the files and point Windows to the inf file when asked for drivers when you connect your EggBot. Note that if you use Vista or Windows 7 and you use this method, Windows will silently fail when you plug in your EggBot for the first time, and you will need to go to the Device Manager and manually install the drivers for the device from there.

4. Troubleshooting

Your software should now be set up to work correctly.

• If, when trying to run USBDriverInstaller.exe, you get a "Application failed to initialize (0x0000135)" error, it means that your copy of Windows does not have the .Net libraries installed. This is straightforward to fix - go to [2] and run the installer from Microsoft, then run USBDriverInstaller again.
• If you encounter difficulty installing the Eggbot extensions for Inkscape (or with plotting, in the next stage), please request assistance through the Eggbot mailing list or forum, which you can find on our front page.
• If there is any chance that a problem you encounter is specific to Eggbot software or hardware, it is important that you do not directly seek assistance through Inkscape's support resources. You're much more likely to get your problem solved by asking people who know about Eggbot. And, we'd like the Inkscape team to be ready to help us when we do encounter Inkscape-specific issues.

Linux

The Eggbot extension for Inkscape has been developed and tested extensively under Ubuntu 10.04 - 12.04. We expect it to work equally well in most Ubuntu derivatives and other distributions where Inkscape is known to work. However, we do not have the capability to test every distribution.

Ubuntu install instructions:

• Use the Ubuntu Software Center to install Inkscape 0.47 or newer (0.48 or newer is recommended.)
• Launch Inkscape from the Applications menu, and then quit it.
• Download the latest Inkscape extension .ZIP file from the downloads section of EggBotCode Google Code site.
• From the "Places" menu, open your Home Folder.
• From the "View" menu select "Show hidden files" -- the .config folder should be visible.
• Place the contents of the folder inside the ZIP archive inside .config/inkscape/extensions/
• Add your user account to the "dialout" group. (See below for details.)
• Log out and log back in, for that group change to take effect.
• The "Eggbot" submenu should appear in the Extensions menu of Inkscape when you start Inkscape.

About adding your user account to the "dialout" group:

In recent Linux releases (e.g., Ubuntu 12 and newer), it is also necessary to change your user permissions, to explicitly grant access to the USB port where the Eggbot is located. This can be done by adding your user group to the "dialout" user group on your system.

• Open up a terminal window
• For Ubuntu, enter the command "sudo adduser UserName dialout" <return>, where you type your user name instead of UserName. (And, no quotation marks.)

• If you are unsure of your user name, enter the command "whoami" <return>, and the computer will happily remind you.
• If you are unsure whether you are already in the "dialup" group, enter the command "groups" <return>, and the computer will list the groups that you are in.

• For other distributions, use the standard method for adding a user to a group. For example, in Fedora, the command would be "usermod -a -G dialout UserName" <return>.
• After changing groups, you need to log out and log back in for the change to take effect.

Troubleshooting

If your permissions are not correct (your user is not in the dialout group), you may get consistent "Unable to find an Eggbot" type error messages.

If the Eggbot menu doesn't appear in Inkscape, verify that when you've extract the zip file, all the .py files are inside .config/inkscape/extensions/ folder (you might have extracted the entire eggbot folder, and .py files might be misplaced)

Additional known-working distributions and configurations

If you do use Eggbot under Linux, please feel free to add your (working) configuration to this list (started November 2013-- not extensive!)

• Ubuntu 12.04 with Inkscape 0.48.2 - 0.48.4
• Fedora Core 18 with Inkscape 0.48.4