A couple of years ago I saw a link to a robot called Hektor. The robot draws with a spray paint can, moved around by two stepper motors which dangle the can from a gondola. I thought it was great, but I never thought I’d have something like that.

In the last two years, I have learned about Arduino based drawing robots such as the Drawbot and the Polargraph. I got even more interested earlier this year following MakerBlock’s Drawbot adventures. I was busier at the time tinkering with my Makerbot, but I was also worried about another aspect: I didn’t want to have to leave my laptop connected to the machine for hours. One of my favorite features of my Thing-o-Matic is that I can operate it from the LCD interface and print from an SD card, so my laptop remains available.

Sandy Noble showed pictures in April of a prototype of the Polargraph SD. I watched that but when it was released I decided not to do anything because at £255 (after shipping) it was just too expensive. Earlier this month I got the itch again, and I was going to send an email asking if there would be a cheaper kit version when I noticed the vitamin kit. I can’t help but wonder if it was available the whole time and I just missed it every time I checked.

But it was there, and I had the time, so I bought one and started using it.