-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 5/18/2012 3:27 AM, Viesturs L?cis wrote: > 2012/5/18 Jan de Kruyf <jan.de.kr...@gmail.com>: >> >> In any case: from the grumbles in this thread we might perhaps >> deduct that there is money in a good micro stepping board, that >> takes position or speed input every msec or so; for the stepper >> people. > > Yes, and the problem is that for serious stepper machines it is ok > to add another piece of hardware, but for total diy hobby machine, > which is built from "whatever there is in the corner of the room", > adding such a piece of hardware could be too much of an additional > cost, which could lead to some users switching to other cnc > controllers that can handle software step generation on existing PC > hardware. OTOH I guess that in situation, when there are no other > paths to take, taking this path (switching to rt_preempt with > higher latencies) would provide some progress instead of having no > progress at all.
All of this is exactly why I was making noises about Arduino hardware a while back (on the -users list) and have been pushing for PREEMPT_RT. Mesa and other folks sell what looks like great hardware if you're at all serious, but I agree there should be a hobbyist path. The small stepper community around 3D printers has settled on the AVR/Arduino and the boards are available and cheap (sub-$25 including shipping direct from Hong Kong). Now that LinuxCNC is running on PREEMPT_RT, I just need to get my stepper based X/Y/Z table going (the parts finally shipped after a 6-week delay!) and I can start trying to get LinuxCNC to talk to it. My current plan is to interface the Arduino to the PC using the EPP board, and off-load the step/dir generation similar to Mesa's EPP FPGA 7I43. - -- Charles Steinkuehler char...@steinkuehler.net -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk+2QPsACgkQLywbqEHdNFy4KQCg5G8Zvi6o+o9tVY3lvsJWuHyN lP4AoK70AshD3mymxoqitGVluAUhQTDA =RsKK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
