How to Use the Gocupi in the Hallway

You probably saw the gocupi whiteboard plotter in the hallway and you are wondering how you can use it to draw stuff.

Well first you need to take an image, preferably 600-1000 pixels square.

Open Gimp. Erase out the background so it’s just just the subject.

Convert the image to Greyscale. Image > Greyscale

Then go to Colors > Levels. Move the black output level slider to the right, until the image is very faint. You might need to go back and adjust depending on how the dithering turns out later.

Now convert it to an indexed image. Go to Image > Mode > Indexed…

Select “Use black and white (1-bit) palette” then select Color Dithering: Floyd-Steinberg (normal)

It should look like a dithered image, the spaces in between the dots are going to show up as lines, so the denser the dots, the longer it will take and darker it will be when it’s drawn.

Now File > Export As…

Click on the file type drop down and select "PBM image (*.pbm). Name your file at the top with the .pbm extension.

Leave it as Raw and click export.

Make sure you have Python 2.7 installed on your computer, it should be under C:\Python27 if not you can download it here.

Now go to “\files\members\MitchC\GocupiConverter” on the DMS network (Shown is the M: members drive already mapped).

Double click on “pbm2svg” to open up the batch file. Then drag your .pbm file to the command prompt window like this.

If everything goes right it should start converting the file and export it as a .svg file.

Right now I have an issue running it on the 'space computers, it’s showing me an error “Access is denied” or “file not found” when I run the script. I’m not sure if it works on a personal computer or not.

Once you have the .svg image file. Go to http://192.168.206.213/

Click on “Upload your own image”, Drag your .svg file. It should upload to the Gocupi. Then show you the image preview. You can now select it.

There are markers ontop of the Gocupi board, there’s a collar with a screw to hold the pen in gondala, you’ll have to hand tighten it, make sure the tip is about 1/2" from the holder sticking out.

Follow the instructions on the page:

Make sure the dry erase board is erased
Make sure the pen is at the origin point
Click the start button below

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Love it! It’s a great addition to the hallways.

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@themitch22 I meant to tell you months ago: You’ll have better luck with braided line. Monofilament stretches…which I’m sure you’ve noticed when using it.

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So I somehow got the pbm2svg script to work. Make sure that the member’s drive “\files\members” is mapped to M: on your windows computer.

You also can skip the part about downloading Python 2.7 because I included the entire Python Portable 2.7 in the converter folder (it’s a huge folder unnecessarily but whatever)

BTW this is the tutorial I followed, but I made sure to package it specifically to run from our members share drive.

Thanks @StanSimmons for the wall plug that screws in. I figured out it’s the cleaning lady that kept unplugging the power to the gocupi.