On Friday 07 June 2013 19:33:46 Peter Jensen did opine: > Hello, > > Matt Shaver pinged me that I should post an update on Rockhopper, > Little Penguin and Emperor (all projects named after penguin types, in > case you're not up on your penguin trivia). ;-)
> I think Rockhopper is exactly what has been described: a web > interface for LinuxCNC, written in Python, that allows JSON based > communications. It supports the users choice of Websocket > connection, a REST HTML interface, or a REST interface with JSONP. > I've made a slew of updates to Rockhopper, but need to push them to > the github server -- sometimes I need some prodding to interact with I have used it several times, and I love the concept. My main problem is that the .svg output, when viewed on a firefox screen has a non adjustable scale that is waaaay too small to be readable. And, if I make the halgragh.svg, then convert it to multiple pages of letter sized paper, I need some sort of control over the scale of the output. The last one I made, 3 hours ago, of the hal file I'm working on for my lathe, was, when converted and clipped to 8.25" x 10.5" pages, totaled 20 pages. If I had some sort of a scale control, I could do that on 4 sheets and still be able to read it just fine. I am inclined to edit the svg file, and divide the viewport by about 3, which should shrink it down to 4 pages if I understand how this works, but there is considerable doubt as to my understanding. :( The other thing is we need a switch to enable a thin, dim, page outline to aid in trimming more accurately, an outline that will show in the printouts to aid us in windy area's, about 1 pixel wide. Thirdly, it needs a switch so it does draw the stuff thats there, but disconnected. That would be handy for both troubleshooting and garbage cleanup in the .hal code. Forthly, thank you very much Peter, for a useful visualization tool. But some docs would be nice. ;-) > the outside world ;-) I'll push the latest up over the weekend. Please post the link when you have. :) > Rockhopper is currently using halcmd to poll the hal pins. It's an > ugly way to do things, but it works fine. If there were a prettier > python interface to the hal layer, that would be the thing to use, > but I haven't really had time to delve into the internals of > linuxCNC and add that. > > As mentioned, Rockhopper also has a HAL graph visualizer. It would > be simple enough to divorce this from the web server, but right now > I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader ;-) > > As for a network-based interface, for me that is the Emperor > project. I've spent a lot of time exploring different cross > platform environments, including Java, Qt, Mozilla XUL, HTML, and a > bunch of others I can't remember at the moment. I could talk at > length about each of these, and their strengths and weaknesses as a > cross platform solution. In any event, after quite a few false > starts, I've finally settled on doing a remote interface using > HTML/CSS/Javascript. In other words, a single-page-application for > the web. > > Here's a picture of what I have running now, running full screen on > a 1024x768 monitor (higher resolution would look better, but this > gives you the idea): > > http://peterjjensen.com/Emperor/Emperor.png > > I've also written a tablet version for Android that has the same > features, but looks a bit different. That's the Little Penguin > project. Here's some pictures of that running on my Nexus 7 Android > tablet: > > http://peterjjensen.com/Emperor/LP1.png > http://peterjjensen.com/Emperor/LP2.png > http://peterjjensen.com/Emperor/LP3.png > > So, to summarize: > > * Rockhopper is a web server that runs on the LinuxCNC machine and > allows remote control. It also includes some web pages for configuring > LinuxCNC (see documentation on the wiki), including a HAL graph > visualizer that works quite well for "reasonable" sized HAL setups. > > * Emperor is a desktop client web page, which is written in Javascript, > HTML and CSS. The idea is to make an easy-to-use interface that can be > run on any desktop platform, including the Linux system running > LinuxCNC (connection over localhost). Emperor uses Rockhopper as the > server. > > * Little Penguin is an Android app which remotely controls the > Rockhopper server, just like Emperor except it's on a tablet. Little > Penguin is written in Java because that is the standard for android > native apps (I couldn't get the performance I wanted from a web-app on > this platform). Little Penguin is intended to be used primarily as an > MPG, but also has features for doing most everything else you might > need to do. * I also made a little Webmin plugin that allows starting > and stopping the linuxCNC system and Rockhopper. That project is too > small to have it's own name ;-) > > > Ok, so now the tough part: how to get it? My last post was > soliciting advice on how to license things, and I haven't really > spent much time thinking about legal stuff since then. Basically, > I want to give as much to the LinuxCNC community as possible, but > I also need to feed my daughter. Any advice on how to best > achieve those two goals simultaneously will be considered ;-) All > this will be handled through Machinery Science, LLC, which is Matt > Shaver, Tom Easterday, and myself. > > * Rockhopper is currently available on github. I expect that it will > ultimately be released under GPL, although I've been to busy coding > stuff to actually think about legal stuff. > > * Emperor will probably also be sold for a fee, although I don't know > what that fee will be. Cheap enough to make it a no-brainer, I hope. > * Little Penguin will be put up on the Google Play store, and I think > we'll ask a small fee to use it ($10 or so?). > > > Matt convinced me I should go to the LinuxCNC Fest in Wichita > later this month, so hopefully I'll get to meet a lot of y'all > there and get feedback on all of the above. I'm not good about > reading the newsgroups, but I will respond to e-mails, and will > try to follow this thread a bit more closely ;-) > > > Cheers, > > -Peter > > > -- > Peter J. Jensen Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me. -- Camillo Di Cavour A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than 200 million guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How ServiceNow helps IT people transform IT departments: 1. A cloud service to automate IT design, transition and operations 2. Dashboards that offer high-level views of enterprise services 3. A single system of record for all IT processes http://p.sf.net/sfu/servicenow-d2d-j _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
