Yes the mesa firmware has been around for quite some time but only in this project has it been this configurable.
Putting an fpga on a pcb isn't super easy for novices, while Mesa is fantastic you are buying a board with the fpga's i/o hardware is set in stone. You can reconfigure stepgens for PWM and such only because the external hardware is the same. If I want to use a 7i76e but I need 6 stepgens, well now I need to add a card. None of that is a major issue it's good stuff but that's how it is. Couple that with the fact that there is a low end cpu attached directly to that fpga and you have an all in one hmi type device that's completely reconfigurable. The daughter card I made was built with the intention of cramming as much stuff as possible, I now use it for prototyping everything because it is literally as simple as writing a hal file and possibly making a simple GUI. I can run just about any machine from my board, albeit a mill lathe, whatever. My biggest issue is actually MK itself, it's too far behind linuxcnc in key areas like joints+axis and since you mentioned mesa, well that's rather far behind too. I wouldn't have a problem deploying mksocfpga if I didn't have a problem deploying MK itself. On Wed, Feb 26, 2020, 4:41 AM Bas de Bruijn <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On 26 Feb 2020, at 01:34, justin White <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Its amazing that mksocfpga doesn't get more interest/support, I dont > think people realize how powerful the idea is. > > Do you mean the reconfigurability? If not, the Mesa FPGA is around already > for a long time, and it is great that the FPGA runs on such a small > platform too. > > The reason I think it is not used very much is that for real use, in a > production/manufacturing environment, there is no hardware that one can > “just buy and works”. > > If I want to use this in a customer project, from an integrator point of > view, my concerns are about longtime availability of the hardware. I do not > want to buy components, solder etc. I just want to open the box, attach > wires to terminals and configure the machine. > > If something breaks or need to make another machine then I want to order > the _exact_ same hardware, use the same code/version of the original and it > should just work. > > This holds for BBB’s too btw. For customers I only use pc’s with the Mesa > cards. There are other considerations than just the cost price of the > board. Development time, hardware availability and support far outweigh the > cost of the board. > > Just my 2 ct. > > > > -- 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]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machinekit/CA%2BQ02MN0Uiof8LE7m%2BWxx%2BPLKonQfug3GbixdXd6ZqzN3bDFTg%40mail.gmail.com.
