> > Yes, BBB with Machinekit is standard fare. There are images you can put on > an SD. > Charles has made the pru_generic driver, and that basically means that > step generation is done on the PRU. > > If you use the BBB, you’d have to make sure you get proper isolation from > the BBB pins to whatever you use down the line. It’s easy to fry a BBB. So > only a PRU does not do the job. It’s the electronics coming after. >
I've been having trouble understanding this "isolation" issue, but your email may have given me a clue. The PRU lines are just internal board lines, not offboard I/O lines? Maybe even a level shifting problem? In any case an extra board changes the landscape. More below ... > Am I correct that you want to run the 7i92 from the BBB? Although I > personally have no experience with this setup. > > You have to take into account that the BBB is not great when it comes to > graphics, Axis is known to have problems when you have a lot of small > segments. So if you want to have proper screens you could use a proper PC > (which IMO are not very expensive). > People keep mentioning graphics on the BBB, but I am also having trouble understanding why that is a concern. I do the CAM on my main workstation (a Mac) and preview the machine paths there. So I really don't do any graphics in the machine control program. Understanding my perspective requires knowing what I'm doing now. I've got an old laptop PC running Windows 10 and Mach3 with a Ethernet SmoothStepper hooked up to my Gecko. I'm attracted to Linux because of the bloat and constant updating in Windows. But at the end of the day I'm wanting to build parts. In order to turf Mach3 I've got two choices, LinuxCNC (or MachineKit) and UCCNC. If I have to run an external PC and create an extra board to buffer the PRU, then why am I using a BBB at all? Why not just run a Mesa 7i92 instead for stepper control? And if I'm doing that, why am I using MachineKit instead of generic LinuxCNC with a real time kernel which supports ethernet? And if running ethernet is a road less travelled even with generic LinuxCNC, then I have to ask myself why I'm not just buying a UCCNC ethernet card for about a hundred bucks and using the UCCNC software which is 55 euros, and just tolerating Windows. One thing about that setup is that I know it will be up and working quickly. It's frustrating because I like the idea of non-bloated Linux and an "embedded PC" which is part of the router and packaged that way, but I'm beginning to think it isn't worth the effort. Given my perspective, do you have any advice? -- website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: https://github.com/machinekit --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Machinekit" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/machinekit. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
