Re: [Emc-users] new kinematics
On Sat, 3 Nov 2007, Stuart Stevenson wrote:
Gentlemen,
I have been exploring a program called Xrefactory. Xrefactory is
supposed to build a display of the project's data flow. I have been in
contact with the company that sells Xrefactory. They told me they will
download the EMC2 project and run their program to see how to make
Xrefactory work with it. I am sure it will be trivial for them. It is
not trivial for me.
Has anyone used a program like this? If you have, what is it?
doxygen can draw flowcharts by using graphviz. there used to be
instructions for how to do it but now i can't find them. there is a file
src/doxconfig if you want to play around with it. generally, i think it is
a waste of time. the taglist plugin for vim is convenient if you use
vim, and superficially similar to xrefactory. and then there are
heavyweight IDE's like kdevelop that show code structure in a GUI fashion.
you can get a better idea of the overall structure of the code by looking
at http://www.linuxcnc.org/docs/EMC2_Developer_Manual.pdf and
http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl?EMC_Components which were
actually written by a human and thus can impart real understanding as to
what the code was intended to do. (rather than what it actually does!)
I want to contribute to the EMC project but I want it to be in a
logical fashion. I am not a C/C++/Python/TCL/TK programmer, hence the
need for a tool to show me the data/variable flow. I am an NC
programmer and machine tool owner/operator/user. I have ideas for
Enhancing the EMC project. I want to be able to implement my ideas
in a manner that doesn't conflict or detract from the current state of
the project.
Most of the kinematics code is in C, and the part you need to write can be
fairly simple as far as code structure. It is mostly trigonometry. You
should copy scarakins.c and make it fit your machine, cut out pieces you
dont need, and document it until you understand everything. Even this
hard-coded example can be useful for others. Only once you have it working
and know what needs to be done should you start planning a generalized
kinematics framework, if you still have the desire to do so. C macros are
tricky since they are not really part of the language.
While you're at it, I think the addition of tool length compensation to
kinematics would be very useful; then we could simply specify the position
and rotation of the tool tip to be in the g-code file. This would require
adding some code to grab the current tool length from
emcStatus-task.toolOffset.tran.{xyz} in addition to the regular x y z a b
c axis variables, and add it to the last coordinate system, which is D5
and D6 in the SCARA example. I think this may have been what the original
EMC designers intended, thus the weirdness with tool change position in
the rs274 spec.
-fenn
-
This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc.
Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop.
Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser.
Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/
___
Emc-users mailing list
Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] new kinematics
For source code exploration there are a few more things that it's nice to be aware of: * lxr web page, which allows you to see definition and use of any identifier, http://cvs.linuxcnc.org/lxr * tags, search for the definition of any identifier from vi or emacs (make tags target in src to set up, :tag or M-x tag or other editor-specific functionality to use) * swish, full-text search of all the source. (make swish to set up, run scripts/swish to use. The output can be interpreted by many editors to automatically go to each file and line where the text is matched. If you are using vim and :source .vimrc in the emc2/src directory, :tag refers to the tags file built by make tags and :grep runs the swish full-index search. Personally, I find tags and swish most useful, because they can run directly in my editor and pull up information about where identifiers are defined or used in a second or so. Jeff - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Hardware suggestions for EMC
On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 01:20:34PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi I have a milling machine here which i want to control with emc. Fo the first tests im using the normal parallel port adapter. I'm, however, afraid of loosing steps on my stepping motors so im planing to use some quadratur encoder to also measure the position of the axes. My questions now are: 1. Is it better to use a dedicated board which is able to control the stepper motor and readout the quadratur encoders. The board is connected via usb (usbserial modul) and the board can send a command for either speed or steps of the motor. No USB hardware is supported by emc at this time. 2. How would i readout quadratur encoder on the parallel port Use the 'encoder' module. After installing emc, man 9 encoder. 3. How many stepper motor can i control maximum with one parallelport and emc? Each stepper motor requires 2 hardware output pin. The parallel port has 13. So if no pins are required for other purposes, 6 stepper motors can be controlled, with one output pin left over. I know that question one implies writing a adaper for the hal. I have basic experience in xenomai programming. Would it be hard to implement the usb board into emc? You'd need a very thorough, low-level knowledge of USB in order to make a USB driver fit the HAL model (hardware read and write takes place according to function position in HAL threads, not based on interrupts or DMA). I don't even know whether this is possible. Jeff - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Hardware suggestions for EMC
Jeff Epler wrote: No USB hardware is supported by emc at this time. The card implements the USB CDC class (it lookes like a serial card to the operating system with the usbserial modul). So i thought since serial connection can be used it would also be possible to use the USB counterpart. I know that question one implies writing a adaper for the hal. I have basic experience in xenomai programming. Would it be hard to implement the usb board into emc? You'd need a very thorough, low-level knowledge of USB in order to make a USB driver fit the HAL model (hardware read and write takes place according to function position in HAL threads, not based on interrupts or DMA). I don't even know whether this is possible. I'm using the same setup (at least for the USB part) for controlling the speed of up to three dc motor on a mobile robot with xenomai. I wrote the USB firmware on the board by myself so USB knowledge shouldn't be problem. Writing the speed is just a matter of sending the correct codes via the USB CDC (dev/ttyUSB0) interface, also the position can be read in this way. So the setup will be like follows: xenomai + rtusb - /dev/ttyUSB0 - (internally converted to i2c) - 12 stepper motors with quadratur encoders. I already looked at the emc2/src/hal/drivers directory out i only found functions which write directly to a set of i/o pins. Isn't there any function/example to directly write a speed or number of step ticks with a frequency? jan - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Avoiding Following Error
I've often thought that that search box ought to be at the top so that we'd see it as soon as we opened a page. I just don't seem to remember my admin password or how to edit Joomla to do that. Rayh although i havent actually tested this, I did waste a good hour trying to get usemod running. :) while we're at it, it might be nice to move GetAdminBar to the top also, so you can edit the page without scrolling to the bottom. Fenn: thanks for the patch. I applied it with minor changes.. Re: admin bar, I think you most definately will want to look over the page if you decide to edit it. Otoh pessing end on your keyboard doesn't take that long :) And the 3rd thign that pops to mind against it, is that there are actually only a couple pages which are that long that you need to scroll for quite a while before you reach the admin bar Regards, Alex - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] new kinematics
Gentlemen, Thanks guys. Looks like I have some exploration to do. thanks Stuart - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Hardware suggestions for EMC
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I already looked at the emc2/src/hal/drivers directory out i only found functions which write directly to a set of i/o pins. Isn't there any function/example to directly write a speed or number of step ticks with a frequency? Well, you could look at the hal_ppmc.c driver. It uses the parallel port as a communication channel to control boards that do this. There are 3 different products. One is a traditional analog velocity servo interface, with a 16-bit DAC. One generates step/direction, and the last generates a PWM signal. All work like a servo, you read position from an encoder counter, compute a new velocity command in the PID routine (not in the driver but in another part of EMC2/HAL) and then send the new velocity to the controller. This sounds like what your board does using USB. One reason I have not gone with USB is that there is that 1 KHz frame clock. Maybe that is not a limitation with rtusb. I see that high speed usb has 8 micro-frames per ms. Jon - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Hardware suggestions for EMC
Jon Elson wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I already looked at the emc2/src/hal/drivers directory out i only found functions which write directly to a set of i/o pins. Isn't there any function/example to directly write a speed or number of step ticks with a frequency? Well, you could look at the hal_ppmc.c driver. It uses the parallel port as a communication channel to control boards that do this. There are 3 different products. One is a traditional analog velocity servo interface, with a 16-bit DAC. One generates step/direction, and the last generates a PWM signal. All work like a servo, you read position from an encoder counter, compute a new velocity command in the PID routine (not in the driver but in another part of EMC2/HAL) and then send the new velocity to the controller. This sounds like what your board does using USB. One reason I have not gone with USB is that there is that 1 KHz frame clock. Maybe that is not a limitation with rtusb. I see that high speed usb has 8 micro-frames per ms. Thx allot for your answer Jon and Jeff. I will have a closer look at the drivers you mentioned adn try to get it running. jan - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] Classic Ladder file
Dear All, In 2005 the EMC gurus did a retrofit on a Mazak at the CNC-workshop. The machine had a toolchanger. Was the toolchanger controlled by Classic Ladder and if it was, is the .clp file in one of the sample configurations of a standard EMC2 install? If it isn't, can someone please send me a copy so I can better understand how to do a toolchanger in CL. Thank you, David Winter. - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Classic Ladder file
On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 06:17:16PM +, David Winter wrote: Dear All, In 2005 the EMC gurus did a retrofit on a Mazak at the CNC-workshop. The machine had a toolchanger. Was the toolchanger controlled by Classic Ladder and if it was, is the .clp file in one of the sample configurations of a standard EMC2 install? If it isn't, can someone please send me a copy so I can better understand how to do a toolchanger in CL. Yes. http://cvs.linuxcnc.org/cvs/emc2/configs/demo_mazak/ - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] Step/Direction Drivers
I am starting work on my mill setup, which uses Sanyo BLDC motors and Rutex drives. The Rutex drives have SPI and step/direction inputs. Without thinking too much about it, I brought up the standard stepper configuration in Axis and before I tried to command a move, I grabbed the motor shaft and turned it to check the encoder polarity. Dooh, of course nothing happened, and I was reminded that the encoder feedback stops at the drive. So I studied the Stepgen diagram in the Integrator's Manual to see how to route the encoder back to EMC and began to realize that most of Stepgen is already in the drive. Why would I want to use Stepgen when all I need is a way to get position commands into the drive? Unless someone can provide valid arguments to the contrary, step/direction inputs on drives seem to just be a hack to make it convenient to interface to legacy systems. What would be the cleanest way to use the step/direction as a communications path (albeit, output only)? Has there been any movement on adding SPI to EMC? Paul_C updated a parallel port SPI driver for me to work with 2.6 kernels, so I can communicate with SPI devices, but my guess is, this is just a small part of getting EMC to talk to SPI drives. Would it be more accurate to to say, what I need is a Rutex driver that happens to use SPI? If getting SPI working would be similar to Ethernet I/O, has there been any documentation created from the recent thread on Ethernet I/O that I could study? -- Kirk Wallace (California, USA http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ Hardinge HNC lathe Bridgeport mill conversion pending Zubal lathe conversion pending) - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] Output Port Blues on EMC2, Ubuntu 6.06
I was running EMC using BDI 4.49. Changed over to EMC2, Ubuntu 6.06. The mini interface runs on the computer just fine, but the machine no longer communicates with my stepper box on LPT1. Does anyone know what file contains the I/O and pin settings for EMC2 on Ubuntu 6.06? W. Bickford Aiken, SC - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Why not use USB to replace the Printer Port
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am puzzled by the issues raised of DMA and interrupts as a problem in using USB. I think that was part of the RT ethernet discussion, but I could be wrong :) In the WinXP system a common way of using USB connections is to handle it as a 'Virtual Comm Port' (VCP). When you plug in your USB device it is assigned a Comm port number. After that the data link behaves exactly like a full duplex RS232 link. Also if you do a Google search you will find several venders selling USB to Printer Port converters. These enable printers without USB capability to be run from laptops without printer ports. So why cannot EMC use a USB port exactly like it uses the printer port? Because a printer doesn't care when it receives the bytes to print, as long as they don't come too fast. EMC2 needs to change the port outputs with very exact timing to make a motor move. This is not accomplished by a USB to parallel converter. Although USB is capable of moving way more data than necessary, it doesn't maintain the timing between port writes. Obviously you need the equivalent of a WinXP Virtual Com Port driver. Is that so difficult to produce? It's not hardware that matters, it's the timing. There are Linux drivers for the virtual comm ports, and I suspect for the parallel ports as well. The main attraction of the USB connection is that much higher data rates are possible. This is completely useless unless you can control the timing, which you can not with USB (unless you make custom hardware). USB has a 1 millisecond frame time. That makes for some very slow step outputs without custom hardware. - Steve - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
[Emc-users] gantrykins.c
Gentlemen, emc2-trunk/src/emc/kinematics/gantrykins.c It looks to me like line 94 is incorrect: is - char *coordinates = XYZABC s/b - char *coordinates = XYZABCUVW. Is the 'is' correct or is the 's/b' correct? thanks Stuart - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] Output Port Blues on EMC2, Ubuntu 6.06
If you did a fresh install, your EMC should be like mine. Parallel port pin assignments are made in a .hal file that is referred to by an .ini file. Look in your home directory under .../emc2/configs (or /home/your_home/emc2/configs) for a directory that matches the name of the configuration you tried to run. Go to that directory and open the .ini file. Look for something like: ... [HAL] HALFILE = suchandsuch.hal HALFILE = anotherhal.hal ... In the same directory look in the .hal files listed in your .ini file for parport.X.pin-XX to get the pin assignments. I hope this helps. On Sun, 2007-11-04 at 22:13 +, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I was running EMC using BDI 4.49. Changed over to EMC2, Ubuntu 6.06. The mini interface runs on the computer just fine, but the machine no longer communicates with my stepper box on LPT1. Does anyone know what file contains the I/O and pin settings for EMC2 on Ubuntu 6.06? W. Bickford Aiken, SC -- Kirk Wallace (California, USA http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ Hardinge HNC lathe Bridgeport mill conversion pending Zubal lathe conversion pending) - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
