Re: [Emc-users] Raspberry Pi LinuxCNC 2.8 question.

[Rafael Skodlar]

On 12/12/20 1:41 PM, John Dammeyer wrote:

From: Nicklas SB Karlsson [mailto:nk@nksb.online]

To make a link to a file "ln -s filename filename", read manual page
"man ln", I always create the link in the wrong direction first time.


Oh gawd, that would mean using the command line.  How antiquated is that when 
the File manager drop down menu and dialogs do it for you?



John


Example for file name linking would be easier to understand this way
 ln -s original.file myFileName

Note that -s means symbolic link that works across the partitions.

Better yet just use manual pages for linking command
man ln

NAME
   ln - make links between files

SYNOPSIS
   ln [OPTION]... [-T] TARGET LINK_NAME   (1st form)
   ln [OPTION]... TARGET  (2nd form)
   ln [OPTION]... TARGET... DIRECTORY (3rd form)
   ln [OPTION]... -t DIRECTORY TARGET...  (4th form)

There is an excellent file management utility mc (Midnight Commander) as 
Gene has pointed out. It allows you to execute, copy, or look into any 
kind of file in text or hex mode which your windog crap can't do with 
default utilities! A GUI version of mc is krusader (in KDE) with the 
same layout.


Command line rules! Anybody can cut/paste a set of commands to tell 
others what to do for a certain effect. Impossible with GUI. What's also 
very important is the history of previously executed commands. You can 
repeat them or find out where you made a mistake.


Command line has one other advantage, it tells you names of commands as 
soon as you start typing first few letters if you tap Tabs key, example:

l Tab  <--- would respond with
Display all 167 possibilities? (y or n)
if you enter "y" then all commands will show up.

All that Desktop crap is for people with IQ bellow 100 which is what the 
internet has come to. The latest trend is to create same sub-directories 
in users home directory as in Windows and call the folders. What's folded???


That's total nuts. When the first letter of a directory or a file name 
is capitalized you need two fingers to handle it. How is that helpful to 
people with one hand or people with poor vision?


LinuxCNC should work without GUI in the first place. A decent text based 
menu should be enough to run most jobs. Original or old CNC machines 
have no GUI in the first place! ncurses were invented way back to create 
nice menus on text terminals. Clicking on pixel icons does not add value!


Enough of Computer literacy 001.


--
Rafael


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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 13 December 2020 14:22:08 John Dammeyer wrote:

> > From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.ch...@gmail.com]
> >
> > I don't call it a problem.  With the three board designs, you can
> > make a replacement for one of the "wings".  splitting it up makes
> > the design of each really easy.  And as said PCBs this size cost
> > under $1 each even in tiny quantity.  So what I see you have here is
> > the start of a family of boards.
> >
> > My problem with this is that I think the Beagle board is grossly
> > underpowered.  It is OK if you are making a battery-powered,
> > portable milling machine but if you have access to AC mains power
> > why use a beagle?
>
> Chris, I think you just made my case for me.  It's not so much that
> the Beagle is underpowered with the two co-processors.  It's that the
> OS and system has exploded in size and inefficiency because the
> developers are always running the latest and greatest development
> systems.  Way back a Pentium-33 had no trouble running EMACs and a
> Pentium-33 was way slower than a BBB.
>
> And we've allowed this inefficiency to happen without complaint.  I
> have a Panasonic Blu-ray player.  Always bugged me that it took so
> long after the power switch was pressed before it responded to the
> button to open the drawer.  It had no trouble immediately scrolling a
> message on the display telling me it was powering up.  Turns out it's
> running Linux.  So a 20 second start up time is considered permissible
> even though it's rude to the user.
>
> The BBB with Replicape and OctoPrint can sit in the connecting state
> for quite some time while it explores all the serial ports at two
> different baud rates before it finds the BBB.  Or, you can select
> which serial port you want to use and it's connected right away.
>
> How much of MachineKit on a BBB is spent searching for and doing
> general stuff that really isn't needed for an embedded system.   How
> much of the software is written with the idea that there is 4GB to 8GB
> of 64 bit wide memory on a system that has 512MB of RAM.  That the end
> user wants to watch movies and surf the web.
>
> I used to make fun of IBM PCs with their 8 bit external bus 8088, 640K
> RAM and hard drive DOS systems.  Running DBASE-II took 5 seconds to
> get to the DBASE-II prompt.  My 8 bit Z-80 system with 56K bytes RAM
> and 8" floppy disks did it in under 2 seconds.
>
> Yes.  Apples and Oranges.  Needless to say the PC was more powerful. 
> But my point is that if the MachineKit port was designed for 64 bit
> PCs with even just 1GB RAM and fast hard drives the likelihood of it
> being efficient without a total rewrite on a smaller 32 bit processor
> with 512MB won't happen.
>
> So I'll throw up the question.  Is as you said, "the Beagle board is
> grossly underpowered", or has LinuxCNC/MachineKit suffered now the
> same Code Bloat that Microsoft Windows and Apple have, making the need
> for bigger processors with more memory mandatory?
>
> John
>
And I will say not to the degree you might think.  Sure, LinuxCNC has 
grown, a lot, but its largely in the modules that have been added to 
expand its capabilities in different environments. What actually gets 
loaded and used in the hal files on any given machine has not grown that 
much.  Maybe 25% in the last decade as the transition to 64 bit 
commodity hardware has caused some of that "bloat".  But I've not edited 
my hal files to call in any that added plasmac or qtvcp stuff that has 
been added to master in the last year.

Where the machine I'm sitting here using has has grown in power 
considerably. The 2.1 GHz 4 core phenom 8 gig machine I built for this 
chair in 2008 started a fire at one of its mobo usb ports a year ago was 
replaced by another Asus board, carrying a 6 core I5 and 32Gig of dram. 
And its running the same hard drive and stretch install it ran on the 
phenom.

The latency of the old phenom was horrible, several milliseconds. No way 
in hell I could have run a machine with it even with rt-preempt kernels. 

So I installed enough LinuxCNC of it to at least run a sim which gave me 
latency-test.  And this machine now is by far the quickest of the 5 
here, I'd have no trouble at all running my 4 axis GO704 with it. And 
that with a stock, stretch kernel. 4.19.0-0.bpo.9-rt-amd64, which has 
not changed by the bigger, more powerfull cpu and 64 bit mobo.  Since 
its the same hd its booting from as was booting the phenom, the 50x 
better latency figures can only have come from the improved hardware. 

But even on the 6040 or GO704, the hal files have not grown by much and 
then only because I built new interfaces for 2 of them due to a need for 
more i/o.

latency-test -period on this machine is 3344 ns,
the old Dell, running the GO704 is 13968,
the Intel D525MW boards that folks raved about years ago are 31862,
and the rpi4 is 16944, 2x faster than the Intel's.

So this machine is by far the quickest of the lot. Yet no single core in 
this machine is 

Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Chris Albertson]

Yes I worked on old computers too.  Back in the 1980's even on high-end Sun
workstations I used to get up and get some coffee while the C compiler
compiled by code.

You can't say "It is good enough because things were even worse 40 years
ago."   Today I am 20 times more productive and can write software that was
impossible before

If in the late 1990s if you have told me to write a program the accepted
digital photos and sorted them into piles of cat-photos and dog-photos I'd
have wasted a ton of time then given up.   Today such a program is an
introductory student exercise.

On Sun, Dec 13, 2020 at 11:24 AM John Dammeyer 
wrote:

>
>
> > From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.ch...@gmail.com]
> >
> > I don't call it a problem.  With the three board designs, you can make a
> > replacement for one of the "wings".  splitting it up makes the design of
> > each really easy.  And as said PCBs this size cost under $1 each even in
> > tiny quantity.  So what I see you have here is the start of a family of
> > boards.
> >
> > My problem with this is that I think the Beagle board is grossly
> > underpowered.  It is OK if you are making a battery-powered, portable
> > milling machine but if you have access to AC mains power why use a
> beagle?
> >
>
> Chris, I think you just made my case for me.  It's not so much that the
> Beagle is underpowered with the two co-processors.  It's that the OS and
> system has exploded in size and inefficiency because the developers are
> always running the latest and greatest development systems.  Way back a
> Pentium-33 had no trouble running EMACs and a Pentium-33 was way slower
> than a BBB.
>
> And we've allowed this inefficiency to happen without complaint.  I have a
> Panasonic Blu-ray player.  Always bugged me that it took so long after the
> power switch was pressed before it responded to the button to open the
> drawer.  It had no trouble immediately scrolling a message on the display
> telling me it was powering up.  Turns out it's running Linux.  So a 20
> second start up time is considered permissible even though it's rude to the
> user.
>
> The BBB with Replicape and OctoPrint can sit in the connecting state for
> quite some time while it explores all the serial ports at two different
> baud rates before it finds the BBB.  Or, you can select which serial port
> you want to use and it's connected right away.
>
> How much of MachineKit on a BBB is spent searching for and doing general
> stuff that really isn't needed for an embedded system.   How much of the
> software is written with the idea that there is 4GB to 8GB of 64 bit wide
> memory on a system that has 512MB of RAM.  That the end user wants to watch
> movies and surf the web.
>
> I used to make fun of IBM PCs with their 8 bit external bus 8088, 640K RAM
> and hard drive DOS systems.  Running DBASE-II took 5 seconds to get to the
> DBASE-II prompt.  My 8 bit Z-80 system with 56K bytes RAM and 8" floppy
> disks did it in under 2 seconds.
>
> Yes.  Apples and Oranges.  Needless to say the PC was more powerful.  But
> my point is that if the MachineKit port was designed for 64 bit PCs with
> even just 1GB RAM and fast hard drives the likelihood of it being efficient
> without a total rewrite on a smaller 32 bit processor with 512MB won't
> happen.
>
> So I'll throw up the question.  Is as you said, "the Beagle board is
> grossly underpowered", or has LinuxCNC/MachineKit suffered now the same
> Code Bloat that Microsoft Windows and Apple have, making the need for
> bigger processors with more memory mandatory?
>
> John
>
>
>
>
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-- 

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Robert Murphy]

Those T series Thinkpads are great, I was using a T61 until I got a T540
(which is awesome with an SSD), after using the Thinkpads I got a 2nd
hand ThinkStation S20. I even got my Mum a ThinkCentre.

On 14/12/20 6:39 am, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp wrote:

Anno domini 2020 Sun, 13 Dec 11:22:08 -0800
  John Dammeyer scripsit:

[...]
So I'll throw up the question.  Is as you said, "the Beagle board is grossly 
underpowered", or has LinuxCNC/MachineKit suffered now the same Code Bloat that 
Microsoft Windows and Apple have, making the need for bigger processors with more memory 
mandatory?

I do my daily work on a T61 from 2005. It boots devuan in < 15 seconds from power on to 
TDE. My mill is run by a T60 with Libreboot + TDE. I have a testsystem on a OnangePi Nano 
LTS. It works, just axis (opengl) is a bit laggy - the simpler GUIs work just fine. So for 
me LinuxCNC never has been the problem. The problem is GUIs and "modernisation". 
If you stay away from anything GNOME and systemd, you are fine - and probably will be for 
the years to come.

Nik


John




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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Dr. Nikolaus Klepp]

Anno domini 2020 Sun, 13 Dec 11:22:08 -0800
 John Dammeyer scripsit:
> [...]
> So I'll throw up the question.  Is as you said, "the Beagle board is grossly 
> underpowered", or has LinuxCNC/MachineKit suffered now the same Code Bloat 
> that Microsoft Windows and Apple have, making the need for bigger processors 
> with more memory mandatory?

I do my daily work on a T61 from 2005. It boots devuan in < 15 seconds from 
power on to TDE. My mill is run by a T60 with Libreboot + TDE. I have a 
testsystem on a OnangePi Nano LTS. It works, just axis (opengl) is a bit laggy 
- the simpler GUIs work just fine. So for me LinuxCNC never has been the 
problem. The problem is GUIs and "modernisation". If you stay away from 
anything GNOME and systemd, you are fine - and probably will be for the years 
to come.

Nik

> 
> John
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
> Emc-users mailing list
> Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
> 



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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[John Dammeyer]

> From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.ch...@gmail.com]
> 
> I don't call it a problem.  With the three board designs, you can make a
> replacement for one of the "wings".  splitting it up makes the design of
> each really easy.  And as said PCBs this size cost under $1 each even in
> tiny quantity.  So what I see you have here is the start of a family of
> boards.
> 
> My problem with this is that I think the Beagle board is grossly
> underpowered.  It is OK if you are making a battery-powered, portable
> milling machine but if you have access to AC mains power why use a beagle?
> 

Chris, I think you just made my case for me.  It's not so much that the Beagle 
is underpowered with the two co-processors.  It's that the OS and system has 
exploded in size and inefficiency because the developers are always running the 
latest and greatest development systems.  Way back a Pentium-33 had no trouble 
running EMACs and a Pentium-33 was way slower than a BBB.  

And we've allowed this inefficiency to happen without complaint.  I have a 
Panasonic Blu-ray player.  Always bugged me that it took so long after the 
power switch was pressed before it responded to the button to open the drawer.  
It had no trouble immediately scrolling a message on the display telling me it 
was powering up.  Turns out it's running Linux.  So a 20 second start up time 
is considered permissible even though it's rude to the user.

The BBB with Replicape and OctoPrint can sit in the connecting state for quite 
some time while it explores all the serial ports at two different baud rates 
before it finds the BBB.  Or, you can select which serial port you want to use 
and it's connected right away.

How much of MachineKit on a BBB is spent searching for and doing general stuff 
that really isn't needed for an embedded system.   How much of the software is 
written with the idea that there is 4GB to 8GB of 64 bit wide memory on a 
system that has 512MB of RAM.  That the end user wants to watch movies and surf 
the web.

I used to make fun of IBM PCs with their 8 bit external bus 8088, 640K RAM and 
hard drive DOS systems.  Running DBASE-II took 5 seconds to get to the DBASE-II 
prompt.  My 8 bit Z-80 system with 56K bytes RAM and 8" floppy disks did it in 
under 2 seconds.

Yes.  Apples and Oranges.  Needless to say the PC was more powerful.  But my 
point is that if the MachineKit port was designed for 64 bit PCs with even just 
1GB RAM and fast hard drives the likelihood of it being efficient without a 
total rewrite on a smaller 32 bit processor with 512MB won't happen.

So I'll throw up the question.  Is as you said, "the Beagle board is grossly 
underpowered", or has LinuxCNC/MachineKit suffered now the same Code Bloat that 
Microsoft Windows and Apple have, making the need for bigger processors with 
more memory mandatory?

John




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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Chris Albertson]

I don't call it a problem.  With the three board designs, you can make a
replacement for one of the "wings".  splitting it up makes the design of
each really easy.  And as said PCBs this size cost under $1 each even in
tiny quantity.  So what I see you have here is the start of a family of
boards.

My problem with this is that I think the Beagle board is grossly
underpowered.  It is OK if you are making a battery-powered, portable
milling machine but if you have access to AC mains power why use a beagle?

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 11:38 PM John Dammeyer 
wrote:

> The problem with the boards are that they are a little too general
> purpose.  So much more is needed above and beyond isolated outputs or
> inputs.
>
> For example, say you want RS485 for the spindle controller.  Or maybe
> CANopen CAN bus for pick and place tools to bring in raw material and
> remove finished goods.  Even just a tool changer.
>
> The Beagle has CAN bus and Serial ports along with I2C and SPI.  These
> should be configured so it's possible add an LCD display with touch
> screen.  If they make one of the CAN pins a switch input then the CAN port
> is lost.  That's what happened with the 4D Systems LCD cape I bought (now
> discontinued).  Useless if I also want a CAN cape.
>
> A cape meant for CNC should know that LIMIT and ESTOP switches should be
> NC type for safety.  So no disabling outputs with the ESTOP signal.
>
>  A hardware PWM module on the Beagle should be an output.  And ideally,
> with a jumper, a PWM to 0-10V output or else STEP with the corresponding
> DIRECTION signal.
>
> Inputs tied to the AB and Index input of one of the quadrature encoder
> modules.
>
> Ultimately what's more cost effective and saleable?  A general purpose
> board that still needs another BoB or a dedicated interface that would work
> with _most_ mills or lathes.
>
> IMHO the latter.
>
> John
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > -Original Message-
> > From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.ch...@gmail.com]
> > Sent: December-12-20 10:37 PM
> > To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
> > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit
> >
> > I just looked.   That is a really nice way to design this.   At first I
> > thought "Three boards? Why?"  but this gives you some flexibility to
> change
> > out one board and also you have some packaging options too.
> >
> > One thing I want to point out is that anyone here could have this PCB
> made
> > for 40 cents each and have a stack of them in hand before the start of
> > 2021.   However it might be worth a re-design using surface mount parts
> > because JLCPCB now offers to assemble SMT parts at no cost.  They would
> > solder everything but the connectors and it would cost maybe $1 per PCB
> > total.
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 9:44 PM Robert Murphy 
> wrote:
> >
> > > I used a 3 board solution on my BBB before switching from MK to
> Linuxcnc.
> > >
> > > https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_cape
> > >
> > > https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_bob_input
> > >
> > > https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_bob_output
> > >
> > >
> > > The cape attaches as normal and the 2 other boards sit either side
> > > connected by a short ribbon cable.
> > >
> > > Still have a few sets of boards left over, and one set of 3 fully built
> > > that I used but no longer have a use for.
> > >
> > > There are pretty basic but I found them to work without any issues.
> > >
> > > On 13/12/20 7:18 am, Alan Condit wrote:
> > > > Marcus,
> > > >
> > > > Jon Elson (Pico-systems) sells the Cramps board designed by Charles
> > > > Steinkuehler that can run six Pololu stepper drives (like 35v 1 to 2
> > > amps).
> > > > I designed a little PCB that can plug into three of the stepper
> driver
> > > > sockets to allow it to control 3 external drives. They are or were
> > > > available on OSHPark as CRAMPS-BOB3-a3.
> > > >
> > > > Alan
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >> From: marcus.bow...@visible.eclipse.co.uk
> > > >> To: EnhancedController 
> > > >> Cc:
> > > >> Bcc:
> > > >> Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 19:38:12 +
> > > >> Subject: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit
> > > >> John (or anyone else),
> > > >>
> > > >> Is there a 'cape' currently available to suit the Beaglebone Black
> > > >> running MachineKit or LinuxCNC?
> > > >> I know there used to be a cape specifically for that purpose, but
> it has
> > > >> been out of production for some time.
> > > >> I have a Beaglebone I would like to press into service running
> either
> > > >> LinuxCNC or MachineKit.
> > > >> Are images available for both?
> > > >>
> > > >> Marcus
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > > ___
> > > > Emc-users mailing list
> > > > Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
> > > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
> > >
> > >
> > > ___
> > > Emc-users mailing list
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> > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > Chris Albertson
> 

Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[John Dammeyer]

> From: Jon Elson [mailto:el...@pico-systems.com]
> On 12/13/2020 03:15 AM, Robert Murphy wrote:
> >
> > The reason for the switch from MK to Linuxcnc, the
> > Linuxcnc project just
> > has a better feel, IMHO, and the forum appears to have
> > more members that
> > use it in a commercial setting. I'm not saying that the
> > former statement
> > is gospel.
> >
> Yes, MachineKit is great if you want to run CNC on a very
> small, cheap set of boards.
> But, the MachineKit software project is almost moribund,
> there has been VERY little
> further development.  I think that is sad, they had some
> VERY exciting ideas, but some of them might have been hard
> to implement.
> 
> LinuxCNC is still being very actively developed, with daily
> commits to the repository.
> My main CNC machine is a Bridgeport, so having extremely
> compact control hardware is not so
> important.
> 
> Jon

I agree Jon.  Unless you are running a Unimat DB-200 or even a small 7x12 lathe 
the size of the control system really isn't a big deal.  And now with the Pi4 
and LinuxCNC the Beagle is even less of a valid choice although Robert's boards 
did remove the need for a BoB.

As for development on MachineKit.  Exactly what development are we really 
talking about?  When I ran the Beagle with the Xylotex board on the mill it 
behaved, from my perspective, exactly the same as the Pi4 with LinuxCNC 2.8.

Maybe it was missing the ability to create 'soft links' that 99.99% of users 
wouldn't care about or even know how to use?  

But seriously, there are those embedded into the world of rebuilding an OS on a 
regular basis and having fun with that.  And there are those who just want 
electronics so they can make parts.   Although I have a Comp. Sci. degree I'm 
of the latter group.  Rebuilding the software all the time is way too much like 
work-work.  Making chips from castings of patterns I've made is what I enjoy.

Quick story and then I'll be quiet.  I have a Raspberry Pi2 running OctoPrint 
driving a cheap 3D Cartesian printer which is run with a small 8 bit Arduino 
based controller.  USB from the Pi to the controller.  It has one of those 4 
line LCD displays and an array of 5 buttons for all the local control; a pain 
to use.  Even a small camera on the Pi2 so I can watch progress remotely.

I treat this 3D printer like I tread my table saw.  I turn it on.  Clean off 
the dust.  Home it and turn on the bed heater to bring it up to temperature.  A 
short while later in another room I drag and drop the gcode file, double click 
on it to load it ready for printing.  Run the home routines once more and when 
I see the Z axis has finished turning click on Print.

I may go out to the sunroom where the printer lives a few times but otherwise 
when the bed has cooled below 30C the part lifts off the glass and I start 
another print or shut it down.

So here's the important part of the story.  I made the mistake of clicking yes 
on an Octoprint upgrade request.  Big mistake.  Rather than first test the 
version of the OS before updating the code the Octoprint broke the OS.  I lost 
all my settings and ultimately had to install the latest OS with Octoprint and 
start over.  

When I complained I was told it was my fault for not running the latest OS all 
the time.  Not her problem she said.  Wasn't mine after that either.  I stopped 
my monthly financial support and the system has been stable ever since.  
Upgrades are no longer done nor needed nor wanted.

So the question for MachineKit on a Beagle with something like Robert's boards. 
How is MachineKit worse than LinuxCNC for a small mill or lathe?

For the those writing the software there's a _need_ or _hunger_ to have the 
biggest/fastest development machine and latest OS.  That results very quickly 
in code bloat and software that then runs poorly on the smaller older machines. 
 And the circle continues as users then have to upgrade hardware to run what 
used to be fast because now it doesn't have enough memory or is slow.  That's  
because rather than design for the smallest slowest machine they design for the 
latest and the evil upgrade cycle continues.

I'll be the first to agree that the Beagle video sucks.  Especially compared to 
a purpose built Pi for high speed video support.   The add on boards that 
duplicate a BoB for a Beagle are less than the lowest cost MESA plus BoB 
combination.  But given the pile of broken or chipped milling cutters I have in 
one box, that cost is minor.  So after a certain point the investment into the 
CNC side is also minor.  

But if you are running a smaller VGA size monitor that works and was free and 
video speed isn't a big criteria why not MachineKit and the BBB?  One only has 
to look at the under $300 milling machine controllers out of China with LCD 
display and a few buttons to see that the market is there for that sort of 
hardware.   An open source hardware/software solution (excludes Pi which isn't 
open source hardware) with a 7" or 

Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Jon Elson]

On 12/13/2020 03:15 AM, Robert Murphy wrote:


The reason for the switch from MK to Linuxcnc, the 
Linuxcnc project just
has a better feel, IMHO, and the forum appears to have 
more members that
use it in a commercial setting. I'm not saying that the 
former statement

is gospel.

Yes, MachineKit is great if you want to run CNC on a very 
small, cheap set of boards.
But, the MachineKit software project is almost moribund, 
there has been VERY little
further development.  I think that is sad, they had some 
VERY exciting ideas, but some of them might have been hard 
to implement.


LinuxCNC is still being very actively developed, with daily 
commits to the repository.
My main CNC machine is a Bridgeport, so having extremely 
compact control hardware is not so

important.

Jon


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Re: [Emc-users] Raspberry Pi LinuxCNC 2.8 question.

[Nicklas SB Karlsson]

Den 2020-12-12 kl. 22:41, skrev John Dammeyer:

From: Nicklas SB Karlsson [mailto:nk@nksb.online]

To make a link to a file "ln -s filename filename", read manual page
"man ln", I always create the link in the wrong direction first time.


Oh gawd, that would mean using the command line.  How antiquated is that when 
the File manager drop down menu and dialogs do it for you?
Drop down menu in at least my file manager to do not have menu item to 
create a link. These soft link are a reference to another file, 
sometimes very useful, those desktop shortcuts used by some window 
managers are something totally different as they are ordinary files.



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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Robert Murphy]

I designed and built them for what I wanted. Another thing that was on
my mind was some one switching from Mach 3 to Machine Kit. The goal was
to lay the I\O similar to what you would have with 2 Parallel ports.

For the time I used it work, and I still may put it back into use with
the little Elks mini cnc sitting on the shelf.


The reason for the switch from MK to Linuxcnc, the Linuxcnc project just
has a better feel, IMHO, and the forum appears to have more members that
use it in a commercial setting. I'm not saying that the former statement
is gospel.

On 13/12/20 6:35 pm, John Dammeyer wrote:

The problem with the boards are that they are a little too general purpose.  So 
much more is needed above and beyond isolated outputs or inputs.

For example, say you want RS485 for the spindle controller.  Or maybe CANopen 
CAN bus for pick and place tools to bring in raw material and remove finished 
goods.  Even just a tool changer.

The Beagle has CAN bus and Serial ports along with I2C and SPI.  These should 
be configured so it's possible add an LCD display with touch screen.  If they 
make one of the CAN pins a switch input then the CAN port is lost.  That's what 
happened with the 4D Systems LCD cape I bought (now discontinued).  Useless if 
I also want a CAN cape.

A cape meant for CNC should know that LIMIT and ESTOP switches should be NC 
type for safety.  So no disabling outputs with the ESTOP signal.

  A hardware PWM module on the Beagle should be an output.  And ideally, with a 
jumper, a PWM to 0-10V output or else STEP with the corresponding DIRECTION 
signal.

Inputs tied to the AB and Index input of one of the quadrature encoder modules.

Ultimately what's more cost effective and saleable?  A general purpose board 
that still needs another BoB or a dedicated interface that would work with 
_most_ mills or lathes.

IMHO the latter.

John







-Original Message-
From: Chris Albertson [mailto:albertson.ch...@gmail.com]
Sent: December-12-20 10:37 PM
To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC)
Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

I just looked.   That is a really nice way to design this.   At first I
thought "Three boards? Why?"  but this gives you some flexibility to change
out one board and also you have some packaging options too.

One thing I want to point out is that anyone here could have this PCB made
for 40 cents each and have a stack of them in hand before the start of
2021.   However it might be worth a re-design using surface mount parts
because JLCPCB now offers to assemble SMT parts at no cost.  They would
solder everything but the connectors and it would cost maybe $1 per PCB
total.

On Sat, Dec 12, 2020 at 9:44 PM Robert Murphy  wrote:


I used a 3 board solution on my BBB before switching from MK to Linuxcnc.

https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_cape

https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_bob_input

https://github.com/ozzyrob/pp_bob_output


The cape attaches as normal and the 2 other boards sit either side
connected by a short ribbon cable.

Still have a few sets of boards left over, and one set of 3 fully built
that I used but no longer have a use for.

There are pretty basic but I found them to work without any issues.

On 13/12/20 7:18 am, Alan Condit wrote:

Marcus,

Jon Elson (Pico-systems) sells the Cramps board designed by Charles
Steinkuehler that can run six Pololu stepper drives (like 35v 1 to 2

amps).

I designed a little PCB that can plug into three of the stepper driver
sockets to allow it to control 3 external drives. They are or were
available on OSHPark as CRAMPS-BOB3-a3.

Alan



From: marcus.bow...@visible.eclipse.co.uk
To: EnhancedController 
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 19:38:12 +
Subject: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit
John (or anyone else),

Is there a 'cape' currently available to suit the Beaglebone Black
running MachineKit or LinuxCNC?
I know there used to be a cape specifically for that purpose, but it has
been out of production for some time.
I have a Beaglebone I would like to press into service running either
LinuxCNC or MachineKit.
Are images available for both?

Marcus



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--

Chris Albertson
Redondo Beach, California

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Re: [Emc-users] Beaglebone and MachineKit

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 13 December 2020 02:35:24 John Dammeyer wrote:

> The problem with the boards are that they are a little too general
> purpose.  So much more is needed above and beyond isolated outputs or
> inputs.
>
> For example, say you want RS485 for the spindle controller.  Or maybe
> CANopen CAN bus for pick and place tools to bring in raw material and
> remove finished goods.  Even just a tool changer.
>
> The Beagle has CAN bus and Serial ports along with I2C and SPI.  These
> should be configured so it's possible add an LCD display with touch
> screen.  If they make one of the CAN pins a switch input then the CAN
> port is lost.  That's what happened with the 4D Systems LCD cape I
> bought (now discontinued).  Useless if I also want a CAN cape.
>
> A cape meant for CNC should know that LIMIT and ESTOP switches should
> be NC type for safety.  So no disabling outputs with the ESTOP signal.
>
>  A hardware PWM module on the Beagle should be an output.  And
> ideally, with a jumper, a PWM to 0-10V output or else STEP with the
> corresponding DIRECTION signal.
>
> Inputs tied to the AB and Index input of one of the quadrature encoder
> modules.
>
> Ultimately what's more cost effective and saleable?  A general purpose
> board that still needs another BoB or a dedicated interface that would
> work with _most_ mills or lathes.
>
> IMHO the latter.
>
> John

While I would argue (gently) in favor of the former as it often has leds 
to let you actually see the input for setup and signal tracing purposes. 
Encoder inputs in particular can often only be accessed by the data they 
generate.  If they fail, where did it fail can be harder to nail down in 
the dedicated case. Not a showstopper, but the added complexity being 
hodden sure doesn't make it easy.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 


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