Re: [Machinekit] Mesa cards compatibility question: Machinekit + ROS (Pins vs Params)

[Jakub Kaminski]

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 

Moreover, currently this file 

 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 package
> > (@Zultron @Luminize @Machinekoder),
> > ros_hal_tests 
> > (@Cdsteinkuehler)
> > ros_hello_machinekit 
> > (@Luminize )
> > 
> > I would like to ask some compatibilty questions.
> > 
> > As @Luminize stated in ros_hello_machinekit repository
> >  :
> > *depending on the hardware you will need to use this machinekit branch 
> (no
> > support !!!)
> >  
> 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
>

-- 
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https://github.com/machinekit
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Re: [Machinekit] Mesa cards compatibility question: Machinekit + ROS (Pins vs Params)

[Charles Steinkuehler]

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 package
(@Zultron @Luminize @Machinekoder),
ros_hal_tests 
(@Cdsteinkuehler)
ros_hello_machinekit 
(@Luminize )

I would like to ask some compatibilty questions.

As @Luminize stated in ros_hello_machinekit repository
 :
*depending on the hardware you will need to use this machinekit branch (no
support !!!)
 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
char...@steinkuehler.net

--
website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: 
https://github.com/machinekit
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[Machinekit] Mesa cards compatibility question: Machinekit + ROS (Pins vs Params)

[Jakub Kaminski]

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 package 
(@Zultron @Luminize @Machinekoder),
ros_hal_tests   
(@Cdsteinkuehler)
ros_hello_machinekit  
(@Luminize )

I would like to ask some compatibilty questions.

As @Luminize stated in ros_hello_machinekit repository 
 :
*depending on the hardware you will need to use this machinekit branch (no 
support !!!) 
 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

-- 
website: http://www.machinekit.io blog: http://blog.machinekit.io github: 
https://github.com/machinekit
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