Now that all the parts have arrived, I’ve finished soldering the Adafruit Motor Shield, it’s time to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

1. The Parts
1. 9 VDC 1000mA regulated switching power adapter – UL listed 
2. Stepper motor – 200 steps/rev, 12V 350mA
3. Micro servo
4. Arduino Uno R3 (Atmega328 – assembled)
5. Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino Kit v1.0
2. Assembly
1. Adafruit soldering and assembly instructions for the Adafruit Motor Shield
1. Hint:  Don’t try to put the L293D into the 16-pin sockets before you solder the socket into place.
2. Hint:  While preparing to solder the header pins into the motor shield, I found that the motor shield would not sit flat on the Arduino Uno because the leads from the motor shield’s reset button were in the way.  I crimped the leads slightly and then motor shield sat flat.
2. Download and read the Polargraph Instructions
1. Polargraph build instructions on Instructables
2. Latest Polargraph Build Instructions circa 11/28/2011
3. Polargraph Instructions circa 10/20/2010
4. Polargraph Instructions circa 10/9/2010
3. Install the Processing environment
1. Processing environment download page
2. It’s necessary to run the Polargraph controller software
4. Update the Arduino Uno’s firmware
1. Go to Arduino.cc and download the latest software (Version 1.0 is 85.9MB for Windows)
1. The latest version of Sandy Noble’s Polargraph software requires the Arduino 1.0 firmware
2. Install the Arduino drivers123
1. Plug in your board and wait for Windows to begin it’s driver installation process.  After a few moments, the process will fail, despite its best efforts
2. Click on the Start Menu, and open up the Control Panel.
3. While in the Control Panel, navigate to System and Security. Next, click on System. Once the System window is up, open the Device Manager.
4. Look under Ports (COM & LPT). Â You should see an open port named “Arduino UNO (COMxx)”
5. Right click on the “Arduino UNO (COmxx)” port and choose the “Update Driver Software” option.
6. Next, choose the “Browse my computer for Driver software” option.
7. Finally, navigate to and select the Uno’s driver file, named “ArduinoUNO.inf”, located in the “Drivers” folder of the Arduino Software download (not the “FTDI USB Drivers” sub-directory).
8. Windows will finish up the driver installation from there.
3. OMG!  I just made an LED blink!
1. I followed up this incredible success by adjusting the amount of time the LED spent off and on.  It was pretty cool. 4
5. Download Sandy Noble’s Polargraph Controller v2.0
1. Download the Windows binaries or
2. Download the source code and compile them for yourself
6. Download the AccelStepper Arduino Library
1. Direct download
7. Download the Adafruit Motor Shield Arduino Library
1. Direct download
2. When I tried to drop this library into the “arduino-1.0/libraries/” subfolder, the Arduino IDE freaked out.  I had to rename the library sub-folder from “adafruit-Adafruit-Motor-Shield-library-dd30da7” to “AdafruitMotorShieldLibrary” since the IDE would not recognize a library with spaces, dashes, etc.
8. Um… now what?
1. As I’ve mentioned, I really have no clue what I’m doing here.  I’m mostly just banged away at the motor shield with a hot soldering iron, jammed it onto an Arduino…  and don’t know what to do next!  Halp?

1. This was written for Windows XP, Vista, and 7, there’s also guides for Mac OS X and Linux [↩]
2. I’ve just copied and pasted this info here for completeness. [↩]
3. MacOSX [↩]
4. Arduinos can be used for MORE than this, you say?!  Tell me more! [↩]