On 02/03/2016 07:50 AM, Ralph Stirling wrote: > > This is exactly what the Machinekit fork of LinuxCNC is for. Check it > out at http://machinekit.io . It runs on BeagleBoneBlack's, RaspberryPi2's,
I'll sure look into this. > and a variety of other ARM boards with and without FPGA's, as well as > PC hardware. All bleeding edge under heavy development, so support > is much sketchier than LinuxCNC, although the developers will answer > questions from people who are diligent in researching their problems > and posing concise questions. > > -- Ralph Thanks Ralph. It's unfortunate that so much effort needs to go into somewhat parallel development but splits or forks like this needs to be done at some point. All large projects go through this eventually. > ________________________________________ > From: Chris Albertson [albertson.ch...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, February 03, 2016 7:35 AM > To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Prempt RT on Linux Mint > > The problem is the EMC2 is an old program designed when hardware was > different. Today no one would design it as one big app that runs on a > a PC with an RT OS. > I suspected something like this but was afraid to bring it up not being a programmer. Thanks Chris for clarifying it. I looked into source code recently. It's easy to tell that thousands of hours went into this product and that it went through different stages going all the way to NIST I think. It must be very difficult to modify any code because of it's structure when you are not poking around at least once a week or so. > Starting over from scratch I'd put the real-time functions on a low > cost commodity single board computer. One of the best is Texas > Instrument's "launch pad" series. They start at $12 for an ARM based > SBC. These are well supported by a big company (TI) that is not going > away soon. There are others like Beal Board and Pi. Each of these > boards can have very good timing. Then you build the GUI to run on > some other platform such as a tablet or phone or web browser or > whatever You can add http://pine64.com/ too. Problem with all those boards is in the fact that they have no common bus so that others could build standard interfaces on open architecture. All seem to be built to replace a PC with most of it's functionality. Want to make a common box, bad luck. Everybody comes with their own silly PCB shape, hole positions, and names for add on boards, unsuitable connectors on all sides so you need space around them, or include chips that are not needed in embedded applications. Who needs audio or 4K video on 3D printer or small CNC machine? In that regard we are back to early 80's or later when some interfaces did not work in different PCs even though the connectors were the same. > The problem is that everyone reading this likely has a day job and > many other things to do and does not want to re-implement software > that works well already. Maybe you don't have to start over? Write > a driver for a common SBC and let al the timing be done there. Then > the hardware for the rest of LinuxCNC is not critical, any old > notebook would work. > > Is the interface for drivers documented? > > End users WILL buy Linux based solutions only if they never have to > know Linux is inside. We have proof of this because currently more Not necessarily. However, embedded systems make Linux practically invisible as I've seen in Stratasys 3D printers. > people own Linux based computers then Windows. All those Android > phones and tablets are Linux as are a good percent of home routers, TV > set top boxes and even the firmware inside some printers. It might > even be the #1 OS in the world right now. But no one wants it if > they have to learn anything new they want the OS hidden inside the > device. > > Exactly. That's why CNC application should be split in two, controller side and user frontend that could reside in different computer, or even different OS. > My interest in CNC is to build robot parts. Robots are a lot like CNC > machines in that they use steppers, serves and DC motors (some times > all of these on one robot.) But typically they have many more degrees > of freedom then does a CNC mill but require much less precision. None > the less the problems are similar. in the last few year a control > architecture has become popular for robots called "ROS" Cool. I'm aware of ROS. Thanks both you guys for good feedback. I won't bug this list with this subject anymore. -- Rafael ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
