Hello All,
I thought it's about time I introduced myself to this list, and
solicit some feedback on my development LinuxCNC plans.
I've been building/retrofitting machines for several years, mostly
to use in my business (tubeclock.com). Lately, I've been using
LinuxCNC, and one of the projects I co-completed recently is
documented on the wiki
(http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GantryPlasmaMachine).
Having used both Mach3 and LinuxCNC on past projects, I'm really
excited about LinuxCNC and it's customization potential. I'm a
bit less excited about the simplicity of use and user experience;
but it's open source, so anything you don't like is really just an
opportunity to improve it ;-)
So, this is where I solicit feedback on some future plans. A
couple of guys at the shop here (Tom Easterday and Matt Shaver,
who some of you may know), and myself, are thinking about starting a small
company to sell pre-configured LinuxCNC systems. We are thinking
of thoroughly documenting specific configurations (software
settings, motherboard, fpga hardware (i.e., Mesa cards), breakout,
isolation, estop setup, motors, etc. etc.) and then selling the
hardware as a pre-built "kit." The documentation would help the
LinuxCNC community, and maybe we can keep the lights on by selling
some hardware.
In the future, we're also thinking about developing a remote HTTP
based API to LinuxCNC, so we could have a headless system
controlling the hardware, and a HMI running remotely, potentially
on a non-linux system. I have put together a proof-of-principal
system using Tornado web server (all Python based), and it runs
well. This will allow some lightweight, low cost CPU (ARM based,
or x86) with no USB or video, to run the machine and allow a very
application specific HMI (GUI) to be developed on any platform of
choice (windows, mac, linux, android, ipad, TI 94/a, atari 2600,
etc.). As I said, this is in the proof of concept phase, but I
thought I'd throw it out there now to see if 1) has work already
been done along these lines or 2) there are any
suggestions/comments about how it should be done best.
Cheers,
-Peter
--
Peter J. Jensen
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