All- I am starting in with some experiments using the RepRap RAMPS board ( http://reprap.org/wiki/Arduino_Mega_Pololu_Shield) (basically a 3-5 axis small stepper driver board with additional heater outputs and temperature inputs), but instead of using an Arduino with firmware like sprinter for controlling it, I plan to use LinuxCNC with a parallel port. To that end I've acquired an Intel 525MW board and am so far very pleased with it. To adapt a parallel port to drive the RAMPS board, I plan to make a small circuit board with the same footprint as the Arduino shield that would normally driver the RAMPS board, but route the parallel port pins instead.
I am expecting this will generally be fairly straightforward, and there is just barely enough parallel I/O to be workable, but I have a few questions that I thought I would run by you all: 1) Many of the output pins are step/dir which of course will require real time control, but others things like heater outputs, etc, that would not suffer too much from latency. Has anyone used a latching shift register for extending parallel port output when latency is less of a concern? 2) I've gotten some basic encoder-based frequency-based analog input working in other scenarios ( http://code.google.com/p/sector67-sandbox/wiki/FrequencyBasedAnalogInput) and plan to use that for the analog temperature inputs on the parallel port if feasible. Does that seem reasonable? 3) Has anyone else done anything similar to this? I've followed the http://reprap.org/wiki/EMCRepRap effort, but that doesn't use the RAMPS board. I expect the user interface and gcode translation tools from that project to be useful. Thanks, Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
