Hi Charles, Thank you for your reply and being supportive! I found the following commit: hostmot2: add support for mesanet ethernet boards 7i80, 7i76e, 7i92 <https://github.com/machinekit/machinekit/commit/e57d6bc0e4c07d5cf3d5ce19c783c48d1e6c0598> Moreover, currently this file <https://github.com/machinekit/machinekit-hal/blob/master/src/hal/drivers/mesa-hostmot2/hm2_eth.c> also mentions 7i92 and some others.
Running text search tools across machinekit-hal repo, I did not find any information about the newest cards like 7i96 or 7i95. I spoke with a Mesa engineer today and finally bought 7i92 and 7i88 for my Machinekit-related work (7i88 daughter board because of the number of step-dir axes which will be used in my research application). There is a plan to later add a second daughter board for inputs only. Best regards, Jakub On Sunday, September 12, 2021 at 12:31:47 PM UTC-4 cha...@steinkuehler.net wrote: > You should be able to use anything supported by Machinekit to generate > step/dir pulses, and last I knew most of the Mesa hardware was > supported. The pins/parameters thing relates to Machinekit generally > dropping support for parameters in favor of pins. This was for a > variety of reasons, but mostly because it allowed for making components > instantiable at run-time, eg: eliminating the need to know ahead of time > exactly how many instances of some component you might need for your HAL > file. > > Most of the Mesa driver logic (eg: the HM2 driver) should be working in > Machinekit, or at least it was when I was playing with Mesa VHDL code in > the FPGA+SoC platforms a while back. Each individual card then has a > small shim of code to handle the different communications protocols (eg: > PCI/PCIe, EPP, SPI, Ethernet, etc). > > On 9/9/2021 4:39 PM, Jakub Kaminski wrote: > > Dear Machinekit Community, > > *tl;dr:* > > Machinekit uses HAL Pins for ROS bindings which is (or was?) nonstandard > > for Mesa cards (which uses params). Can I use any Mesa card with ROS and > > Machinekit for Step-dir control? (Looking at 7i92 + daughter cards). > Trying > > to validate what I read online. > > > > *Full message:* > > Impressed by the possibilities that Machinekit + ROS offer and your great > > work at: > > hal_ros_control <https://github.com/zultron/hal_ros_control>package > > (@Zultron @Luminize @Machinekoder), > > ros_hal_tests <https://github.com/cdsteinkuehler/ros_hal_tests> > > (@Cdsteinkuehler) > > ros_hello_machinekit <https://github.com/luminize/ros_hello_machinekit> > > (@Luminize ) > > > > I would like to ask some compatibilty questions. > > > > As @Luminize stated in ros_hello_machinekit repository > > <https://github.com/luminize/ros_hello_machinekit> : > > *depending on the hardware you will need to use this machinekit branch > (no > > support !!!) > > <https://github.com/luminize/machinekit/tree/hostmot-remove-params2> > which > > uses pins instead of params for the mesa hardware stepgen. BEWARE only > > tested on a mesa 5i20 card. YMMV * > > > > I plan to buy 7i92 + daughter step/dir card just in case my parallel port > > is not good enough. Will it work with Machinekit + ROS without much > > modifications? Do I need to apply some custom branch or some other > hacking? > > > > Thank you for your time devoted to this and making these meaningful > > contributions, which are a real game-changer for robotics researchers. > > > > Best regards, > > Jakub > > > > -- > Charles Steinkuehler > cha...@steinkuehler.net > -- 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 machinekit+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machinekit/b18ad707-d2a2-4456-8fc0-5364f5bf71bcn%40googlegroups.com.
