andy pugh wrote: >> >Why are some people so hung up on the idea that one box (even a box full >> >of micros) must be used as the machine control? > That is what EMC was conceived as. The whole underlying idea was to > use cheap, off the shelf, PC hardware for machine control, rather than > use expensive dedicated hardware. > >> >With low cost motion devices like smoothstepper, pokeys, > A Smoothstepper is considerably more expensive than a cheap PC, and > can only do one thing. > As far as I know a Pokeys isn't a real-time motion control device at > all, but a USB HID device?
I think that this is the crux of the matter? There are a few USB linked 'co-processors' which have closed source code, but if there was a 'co-processor' with a suitable open-source code base then it would be interesting? Rasberry PI could be such a 'co-processor' but there are a few other 'light' linux boards. However as has been identified, they all need a 'real time' kernel or a 'dedicated driver' ( like Art's Mach3 windows one ) to run the actual I/O at a fast enough rate. We HAVE a suitable realtime kernel for x86 processors, and access to low priced ITX and even mini-ITX boards that will work happily with existing code, so why not simply build a 'co-processor' around this readily available hardware, and use a second one to provide the graphics and user interface? Is there really any need to spend time working on a realtime kernel for Rasberry PI which is not brimming with decent I/O when there are other options already. That time would probably be better spent on a 'proper' co-processor, one that has custom pulse generating hardware ... and nothing else? There are a number of good cheap 'real time processors' available even ones with an Ethernet port, but any fast data link would do? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Don't let slow site performance ruin your business. Deploy New Relic APM Deploy New Relic app performance management and know exactly what is happening inside your Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and .NET app Try New Relic at no cost today and get our sweet Data Nerd shirt too! http://p.sf.net/sfu/newrelic-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
