brachiograph-converter-gui

Desktop application for converting images to BrachioGraph JSON drawing format.

tl;dr I wanted a GUI app for quickly converting images to draw with a BrachioGraph, I really liked the one that Henry Triplette made, but then PySimpleGUI went to a paid model. After thinking about upgrading (or migrating to FreeSimpleGUI), I decided to write a new-but-similar thing using PySides / QT instead. That thing, is this thing.

Background

Provides a graphical interface for the image-to-JSON conversion workflow used with BrachioGraph pen plotters. Supports loading images, adjusting conversion parameters, previewing results, and uploading output to a BrachioGraph device via SFTP.

Uses the linedraw.py module for image processing, originally written by Lingdong Huang with modifications for BrachioGraph.

Install

Requires uv.

No separate install step is needed. Run directly with:

uv run brachiograph_converter_gui.py

uv will handle dependency installation automatically on first run.

Usage

uv run brachiograph_converter_gui.py

The application provides:

• Image — select an image file (JPG, PNG, TIFF, WebP)
• Contours — edge detection detail (0–10, default 2; lower values produce more detail)
• Hatch — hatching line spacing (1–100, default 16; lower values produce more detail)
• Repeat contours — repeat outer edges for emphasis (0–10, default 0)
• Generate — convert the image; output SVG and JSON are saved to the images/ directory
• Upload — send a JSON file to a BrachioGraph device over SFTP
• SFTP Settings — configure hostname, username, password, and remote directory
• View Files — open the images/ output directory

SFTP connection settings and last-used image directory are persisted in ~/.brachiograph_converter.json.

Maintainers

@andypiper

Thanks

• Henry Triplette — concept and original python-brachiograph-gui
• Lingdong Huang — linedraw image processing routines
• Daniele Procida — BrachioGraph project
• Streamline icon set

License

MIT © 2024 Andy Piper

Streamline icon: CC-BY-4.0