Re: [Emc-users] user interface development?

2009-05-07 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, Does the error message come up right away, or do you get a chance to enter anything? You should be able to type 'help' after getting: Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. I am also running 2.3.0 on Hardy, so I know that it works for that configuration. I will not be able to tes

Re: [Emc-users] user interface development?

2009-05-07 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, It is generally pretty simple. If you are getting connection refused that usually means emcrsh is not running. Another way to start it from any configuration is to use halcmd (after starting emc) from a terminal session as follows: halcmd loadusr emcrsh Then see if you can connect with: te

Re: [Emc-users] user interface development?

2009-05-03 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, There are two main functions which a user interface must perform. 1> Issue NML commands. The best reference for these is in the Developers Handbook: http://www.linuxcnc.org/docs/devel/EMC2_Developer_Manual.pdf See chapter II on NML messages. You can also see examples of how these commands

Re: [Emc-users] How to power HDD & CDROM with picoPSU, recommended in the manual?

2009-04-26 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Erik, Check this manual, I think it is the same one you referenced. See page 4, where it specifies connectors. http://resources.mini-box.com/online/PWR-PICOPSU-120/PWR-PICOPSU-120-manual- engl.pdf "Molex 39-01-2200, two 3.5" drive power connector, 1 floppy. P4-12V 4 pin header adapter sold separ

Re: [Emc-users] anyone doing some laser cutting or engraving

2009-04-23 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Dirk, The parallel port is not practical, at least for the lasers I am using as the minimum PWM frequency supported is 5Khz. The Synrad lasers accept a PWM reference signal in the range of 5-25Khz. It is internally clocked at 5Khz as far as adjusting laser power, so there is no performance differe

Re: [Emc-users] anyone doing some laser cutting or engraving (Eric H. Johnson)

2009-04-23 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Adam, I don't have much experience with the very inexpensive lasers, I have used primarily Synrad up to this point, although currently I am doing a retrofit on three China laser systems. I don't recall the manufacturer of the tubes but I can find out. So far, considering the price, they are perfo

Re: [Emc-users] Another Telnet question

2009-04-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Andrew, That is just the initial check-in, but if you read the comments at the beginning of schedrmt.cc you will see how it works, or at least should work once everything is tested. Basically what it does is talks to another new module emcsched.cc which schedules programs (i.e. gcode files) to exe

Re: [Emc-users] Help configuring hostmot2 stepper system

2009-04-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Alex, Well yea, then start backing it back down. But I got fooled on that because I did not increase FError enough to see a difference, and hence started looking at other parameters. Sort of like he is doing now. This is just proving that FError is the parameter you want to look at adjusting. Reg

Re: [Emc-users] anyone doing some laser cutting or engraving

2009-04-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Dirk, I have been using EMC to do both cutting and engraving with lasers. Cutting is pretty straight forward, engraving is a bit tougher depending on the type of engraving. Fixed power engraving isn't too bad, i.e. the case where whenever the laser is on, it is at a single power level (obviously y

Re: [Emc-users] Help configuring hostmot2 stepper system

2009-04-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Rob, Have you tried adjusting FError and Min_FError? You can increase FError by quite a bit, say 100 or higher if necessary. In my case that got rid of most of the following errors. The one instance I would still get them is in a sequence of G0 moves, such as retract, move, plunge (I am using a l

Re: [Emc-users] Problems with emcrsh using large percentage of CPU

2009-04-20 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Michael, Those are mostly known problems. I have not really experienced the CPU lockup you mention, but I run headless, which means that when ecmrsh is exiting, the system is being turned off too. Although I do see the other problems when doing development. It does check for a broken connection

Re: [Emc-users] New user interface development question.

2009-04-17 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, FYI, I have done a couple of proof of principle touch screen layouts, but that is as far as I got with them. In particular I was looking at using a Lilliput 7" touch screen display (16x9 format), which is a bit different from say a 17"+ 4x3 format display typical of large CNC machines. In my

Re: [Emc-users] EMC in South West UK

2009-04-03 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, Er, you mean like this? http://www.frappr.com/emc2/ :) Regards, Eric Hello community, I think Aaron had a great idea. How about a world map showing the places where EMC addicts are so we could visit each other and profit from their experiences? I guess it would be quite around the world

Re: [Emc-users] using a 5i20 for stepper motor control

2009-03-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Oops, I meant to include the link to the User's Manual: http://www.linuxcnc.org/docs/EMC2_User_Manual.pdf Regards, Eric >> A lot of my programs consist of 3D curves built up out of small lines and even with a G64 P0.1 (or larger in mm) the system never reaches the programed feed rate and the CP

Re: [Emc-users] using a 5i20 for stepper motor control

2009-03-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Rob, >> A lot of my programs consist of 3D curves built up out of small lines and even with a G64 P0.1 (or larger in mm) the system never reaches the programed feed rate and the CPU load reaches of up to 95%. << Just how short are your curves and when you say "small lines", do you mean G1 or G2/G

Re: [Emc-users] How can I get emc to automatically run g-code without an operator?

2009-03-12 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Michael, A quick preface before addressing your individual points. Emcrsh basically just ported the functionality of emcsh to a telnet type interface. IOW, the tk/tcl interface was replaced by a socket interface. So in most cases the reason it does what it does and separates the commands out the w

Re: [Emc-users] How can I get emc to automatically run g-code without an operator?

2009-03-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Michael, Sorry, I was responding from memory and gave you the wrong path. It is relative to the nc_files folder ($HOME/emc2/nc_files by default). At any rate do the following: In your hal file add the line: loadusr emcrsh IOW, with no parameters. To get it going we will use all of the defaults.

Re: [Emc-users] How can I get emc to automatically run g-code without an operator?

2009-03-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Michael, The path is relative to the home folder of the account from which EMC was run. Typically this should be: emc2/nc_files/ or emc2/nc_files/examples/ Regards, Eric Thanks for the quick response. I configured emcrsh and it is working very well. I can do everything but open a file. No matt

Re: [Emc-users] 0-10v ADC

2009-02-25 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Robert, I was just looking for something similar. In my case it does not need to be real-time and can work like hal-joystick. I was wondering how much different something like this would be to implement relative to hal-joystick: http://www.measurementcomputing.com/usb-data-acquisition/miniLAB%201

Re: [Emc-users] Mesa 7i43 and external power

2009-02-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, >> I would check the power supply wiring Note the 7I43 power connector is _not_ a floppy connector It is pinned out: 1 5V 2 GND 3 GND 4 5V << Yea, I realized that right after posting the question. I just saw the connector and thought how convenient that was to use the same conne

Re: [Emc-users] was (no subject) - Configuring m5i20 and 7i43

2009-02-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Mohamed, Caveat - This mostly from memory, I am not at my machine at the moment, although I happened to have my configurations with me on a thumb drive. I am using the firmware from 2.2.8. By default it loads each time EMC is started, although that can be turned off. You configure your system thr

[Emc-users] Mesa 7i43 and external power

2009-02-23 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I am sure I just missed something simple here, but I am having the CPU board refusing to boot when I connect an external 5V supply. For purposes of testing I am simply getting the 5V from the PS for the motherboard. I have moved jumper W6 to the down position, W2 to the up position, and

Re: [Emc-users] setting up SMP & RT

2009-02-08 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Rob, Did you compile, package and install rtai? Regardless of the exact means you used to build the kernel and rtai, you should end up with three packages. 1> Image package, i.e. linux-image-.deb 2> Header package, i.e. linus-headers-.deb 3> Rtai package, i.e. rtai-modules-.deb It sounds like yo

Re: [Emc-users] setting up SMP & RT

2009-02-08 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Robert, Are you using the SMP packages that were recently posted to 'experimental'? If so, it sounds like you missed installing one of the packages. Rtai_math.ko is in the package 'rtai-modules-2.6.24-16-rtaismp_3.6.1-linuxcnc.4_i386.deb'. Also note, 'experimental' means just that. There are know

Re: [Emc-users] How to turn the spindle / coolant on to resumeafter program stop ? (Alex Joni might know about this)

2009-02-04 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Tom, It looks like his instructions was missing the following: sudo apt-get build-dep emc2 sudo apt-get install build-essential libpth-dev Then just to make sure you are in the correct folder: cd ~/emc/src ./configure --enable-run-in-place make sudo make setuid Regards, Eric > Actually it's p

Re: [Emc-users] How to set A axis to follow XY tangent?

2009-02-03 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Br, Coincidentally there was just a long thread over in "EMC Developers" on this very subject. If you have access to it, see the thread "Tangential tool configuration". To summarize, the consensus opinion was to not do this in the kinematics, but rather through a preprocessor / filter. For G1 mov

Re: [Emc-users] Hi All

2009-02-02 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Rainer, There are plenty of options under EMC for directly interfacing with servos. Do I read you correctly that you are generating step signals through Mach and then use hardware to covert steps to either a pwm or analog signal? You can bypass generating step signals in EMC by using any of a num

Re: [Emc-users] Segmentation fault

2009-01-21 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Perhaps I have the units used with memlock wrong, but if I look at a system on which emc is working and compare to this system, both have memlock set to 20480, which I suppose could be 20MB instead of 20KB. Regards, Eric > I am guessing that the segmentation fault has something to do

Re: [Emc-users] Segmentation fault

2009-01-21 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I installed the development environment on the box described below which other than the command line install only has xorg, xfce4 and slim installed. I installed the development environment and did a build from source (trunk - pre-2.3). When run this generates the following errors when att

[Emc-users] Segmentation fault

2009-01-21 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I was playing around with doing a minimal install of Linux and EMC to a flash drive. It mostly seemed to have worked, except that halcmd generates segmentation faults (the operation was a success but the patient died ). What I did was using the 8.04 alternate install CD, installed with t

Re: [Emc-users] emcrsh now says ACK

2009-01-17 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Chris, Regarding passwords, make sure you have the command line syntax correct. Here is an example: loadusr emcrsh --connectpw=changed enablepw=changedtoo If you can log on with the default passwords and not the passwords from the command line, then there is probably a syntax error. As for ove

Re: [Emc-users] emcrsh says NAK

2009-01-16 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Chris, As Les said, it should work very simply. Unless you want to change one of the defaults, all you should need in your hal file is: loadusr emcrsh You indicate that you have that working, but best to start with the defaults. After connecting with telnet, the hello string should be: hello EM

Re: [Emc-users] Telnet Interface Questions

2009-01-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Rafael, As the author of that particular interface, my main objectives were: 1> As simple a network interface as possible. 2> An interface that does not change with each version of EMC. I don't see how it could be much simpler than this. All one has to do to work out an interface is to put "loa

Re: [Emc-users] Telnet Interface Questions

2009-01-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Les, The passwords are passed as plain text, so a determined hacker would not have much difficulty sniffing out the passwords. One option for increasing security over the Internet is to run the telnet session over an ssh connection. That way all transactions will be encrypted and it adds an additi

Re: [Emc-users] request to EricJ and his new latency test results

2009-01-10 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Kent, You are correct about the Jetway board, it does not have a build in parallel port. However on the systems I used that board, I was also using the Mesa 5i20 controller with the hostmot2 drivers. So no parallel port was required. The pins to run out a parallel port are provided on the board ho

Re: [Emc-users] Motherboard recommendation, WIKI seems not up to date

2009-01-07 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Tom, Steve, I can report success with the Intel D945GCLF2 mini-ITX Motherboard, at least so far. I have not installed this board into a production system as yet, but have used it for testing with the Mesa 5i20 and 7i43 controllers. Unlike many ITX boards, it does come with a built-in parallel por

Re: [Emc-users] Making sense of debug output

2008-12-23 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Jeff, Already did that. Both Axis and TkEMC work flawlessly, unless of course emcrsh is running at the same time. Further, it only seems to happen when on a network without a resolvable gateway address. I am just trying to figure out how to track down what is causing it, where the move to 0,0 is b

[Emc-users] Making sense of debug output

2008-12-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I am trying to track down a problem and need to make sense of the debug output. What is happening is in a very small number of G-Code programs, instead of doing the commanded vector, it does a move, at the current feed rate to relative coordinates 0, 0, then picks up at the next vector. It

Re: [Emc-users] Changes to hostmot2 in 2.2.8

2008-12-16 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Yep, that got it. Regards, Eric That did it. Embarrasingly, it's the same kind of bug as bit me just recently... You told it to use zero encoders, and it still tried to poke at it. If you can stand turning on one encoder instance ("num_encoders=1") it'll work. If not, try Trunk,

Re: [Emc-users] Changes to hostmot2 in 2.2.8

2008-12-16 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Yes, I know. It does have a 5i20 board in it as well. Regards, Eric I just reread this... Does your new test computer have a 5i20 card in it? If not, the driver won't load. Or, more correctly, the driver will load but wont export any HAL objects until you hot-plug an AnyIO board. P

Re: [Emc-users] Changes to hostmot2 in 2.2.8

2008-12-16 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, The line it is apparently choking on is: Loadrt hm2_5i20 config="firmware=hm2/5i20/SVST8_4.BIT num_stepgens=2 num_pwmgens=1 num_encoders=0 enable raw". I also removed the enable raw and got the same error. The preceding line, loadrt hostmot2 seems to work. Here is the suspicious pa

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, It is a problem for down the road, not on my current project. I am not currently trying to do laser writing / engraving but would like to do that in the not too distant future. The fist approach I took was to use the spindle, but I ran into a number of problems there, particularly tha

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Chris, You are correct. I was using TkEMC (not my usual UI) for testing and misinterpreted what the button state was indicating. I see now that it was indicating machine off, not e-stop. Regards, Eric When this happens what exactly do you see? I am wondering if the machine does not actually go

[Emc-users] Changes to hostmot2 in 2.2.8

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, et al, Was there any significant change between 2.2.7 and 2.2.8 for the hostmot2 drivers. I just rebuilt a box so I could test away from the machine, and installed from the 2.2.8 binaries. I then ported my working 2.2.7 configurations over to the new box. On loadrt hostmot2, or loadrt

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, >> The only thing I have to add is that Matt Shaver has reported following errors with hm2 stepgen, and this issue has not been resolved yet. His workaround is to set the following error limit to "practical infinity", until we figure out what's really going on. << I pushed it up to 10

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Steve, A question on that, how would the scale value enter into that calculation? I have motor-pos-cmd directly connected with motor-pos-fb, as below. Zpos-cmd is then connected to hm2_5i20.0.pwmgen.00.value and separately scaled. net Zpos-cmd axis.2.motor-pos-cmd => axis.2.motor-pos-fb setp hm2_

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, The servo period isn't much of a problem, with a 1.6 Ghz dual core processor I was able to get the servo period down to 250 to 300 micro-seconds before I started getting overruns. The problem I have not figured out yet is how to outfox the kinematics, since in 200 micro-seconds, the las

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Jim, That is exactly what I am doing. There is no PID, axis.2.motor-pos-cmd is connected directly to axis.2.motor-pos-fb, as follows: net Zpos-cmd axis.2.motor-pos-cmd => axis.2.motor-pos-fb Regards, Eric another thought. can you take out the pid loop completely? that way the pwmgen just get

Re: [Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Jim, I have done that too, but the problem with using the spindle is that the system stutters when the spindle speed changes. Using Z allows smoothly changing laser power on the fly. I make Z values very small, then use large multipliers on the PWM scale so that laser power can change quickly with

[Emc-users] Strange problem with position feed back

2008-12-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I have a strange problem which looks like it is related to the position feedback, but I also suspect I may be looking in entirely the wrong place. I have a three axis configuration where the Z axis is mapped to a PWM for a laser. The hardware is the Mesa m5i20 controller with the hostmot2

Re: [Emc-users] Write error with hostmot2 and 7i43 board

2008-12-09 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, That is good news, at least as far as finding a problem and having a probable solution. What do I need to do from here? Please feel free to contact me off list. BTW, regarding the EMC 2.3.7 + 7i43... thread, I also have a box with a VIA mini-ITX motherboard (http://www.mini-box.com/Hybrid-

Re: [Emc-users] Write error with hostmot2 and 7i43 board

2008-12-05 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, At this point I am just working out the configuration. I am not connected to anything as far as hardware. There is nothing connected to the P3 and P4 connectors. Regards, Eric Well thats fairly weird. If there is no configuration difference, Is it possible that there is a electrical nois

Re: [Emc-users] Write error with hostmot2 and 7i43 board

2008-12-05 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, I found something interesting while checking to get your answers. Presiously I was only jogging X and Y, and did not get any errors. This time I tried Z as well. When I jog the Z axis I get the TRAM write error. That would explain why I get the error when running a G-Code program, but not

Re: [Emc-users] Write error with hostmot2 and 7i43 board

2008-12-04 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, >> What EPP mode are you using and what type and length of cable do you have between the 7I43 and Parallel port? << The available parallel port modes in the BIOS are Output only, Bi-directional, EPP and ECP. It is set to EPP, but I do not see a further selection for mode of EPP. I think we

[Emc-users] Write error with hostmot2 and 7i43 board

2008-12-04 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, et al, I am getting a strange error using the hostmot2 driver and the 7i43 board. The error is "hm2/hm2_7i43.0: TRAM write error! (addr=0x1000, size=8, iter=68373). The error occurs when running a g-code program but not while jogging, at least initially. If I bring the system up from a

Re: [Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, Yep, that was it. Set it to parallel port and it basically worked. Thanks, Eric That to me indicates that you have the 7I43 in USB config mode, this wont work for EMC... When the 7I43 is on EPP mode and first powered on, all three status lights should be on ---

Re: [Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, When I connect the USB cable, one LED (left most) flashes momentarily and goes off, the second red LED and the yellow LED are on steady. After trying to download, there is no change. Regards, Eric First off it would help me to know whether the firmware download succeeded This is indicat

Re: [Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, The Parport is at the normal address of 0x378. I did not do a loadrt probe_parport. I have now added it, but still get the same error. Regards, Eric They are disabled, but you can force it. Try this: 1. Stop realtime 2. sudo insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/parport/

Re: [Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, I changed the parallel port mode to EPP, no difference. How does one tell what the interface version is? It is not listed in the BIOS. The BIT files I am using are dated 11/11/08. Regards, Eric Parallel _Downloading_ firmware to the 7I43 requires: 1. Parallel port with _EPP_ interface,

Re: [Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Install the parport drivers how? I thought they were disabled in the rtai kernel so they would not conflict with EMC. The cable is a factory made cable and rings out. Regards, Eric The error you're getting is indicative of a low-level parallel port communication error. You should f

[Emc-users] Using hostmot2 for 7i43

2008-11-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, et al, I recently got a 7i43 (7i43-U-4 to be specific) and am getting an error loading the firmware. I load the drivers / firmware as follows: Loadrt hostmot2 debug_idrom=1 debug_module_descriptors=1 debug_pin_descriptors=1 debug_modules=1 Loadrt hm2_7i43 config="firmware=hm2/7i43/SV

Re: [Emc-users] Cable recommendations for Mesa boards

2008-11-21 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Matt, (and everyone else) Thanks, I think you are right. I won't get a chance to test it until Tuesday, but will let you know. Regards, Eric I don't think 3.3 Volts will be enough because the recommended R_series in Figure 7.7 is 0 ohms for 5 Volts, meaning there is either an existing series res

Re: [Emc-users] Cable recommendations for Mesa boards

2008-11-20 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, Sebastian and Peter, Here is a combined reply, using John's post as the basis. >> What kind of stepper drives? In particular, I'm asking about the inputs. Optocouplers, or non-isolated? Do they have any filtering? << I am using an IM483 micro-stepping driver, the manual can be found here

[Emc-users] Cable recommendations for Mesa boards

2008-11-20 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I am running into a small problem with dropped / excess steps using the m5i20 board and Hostmot2 driver. The problem appears to be with the 50 pin cable connecting the m5i20 with the TB. The quick form of my question is, are there any recommended cables / manufacturers of cables to use wit

Re: [Emc-users] Problem with RTAI on Ubuntu 8.04 HH and new EMC2 2.2.7

2008-11-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Roberto, I suspect what is happening is that the real time kernel is not the default kernel and the errors you are seeing are a consequence of not having a real time kernel loaded. You can select the kernel on boot, on some systems you may need to hit escape while grub is loading in order to selec

Re: [Emc-users] Ubuntu related question

2008-10-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, Go to System | Administration | Networking to set up your wireless parameters. Note that the rtai kernel (so I understand) does not include the wireless drivers. So if you install EMC which includes the rtai kernel, you will have to boot back to the generic kernel to use the wireless. Regar

Re: [Emc-users] New Guy help with EMC2 and Sherline Mill

2008-10-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, The first thing to do is to just see EMC in operation. Select one of the Sim configurations, Axis and TkEMC are good choices. As the name implies these configurations use simulated I/O, so it will not do anything as far as controlling a machine. It will just give you a feel for what it shoul

Re: [Emc-users] Problem after installation of EMC2 on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-10-06 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, Found it. With the Hardy install, it does not set the rtai kernel as the default kernel. So by default it is booting the ...-19-generic kernel. The rtai kernel must be explicitly selected at boot time in order to run EMC. Regards, Eric I just tried to install EMC to Hardy and am getting

Re: [Emc-users] Problem after installation of EMC2 on Ubuntu 8.04

2008-10-06 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Alex et al, I just tried to install EMC to Hardy and am getting a similar if not the same error. This is what appears to be wrong: insmod: can't read '/usr/realtime-2.6.24-19-generic/modules/rtai_hal.ko': No such file or directory There is no /usr/realtime-2.6.24-19-generic folder. I checked the

Re: [Emc-users] How does axis communicate with emc?

2008-10-05 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Alan, In addition to what Stephen said, see if emcrsh does what you want. Take any one of the sim configurations (tkemc is a good one) and add: loadusr emcrsh to one of the hal files (servo_sim.hal for example) Run EMC, then open a terminal session and enter: telnet localhost 5007 After it conne

Re: [Emc-users] How does axis communicate with emc?

2008-10-04 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Alan, Are you trying to directly send motion commands to EMC or just want to write your own .NET based custom user interface? If the latter, there are much easier ways than going through NML. Regards, Eric I am interested in understanding how Axis communicates with emc because I want to try send

Re: [Emc-users] stepgen & pwmgen fixes

2008-09-24 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, Sebastian, Ok, I understand the intent of the enable. This application is a retrofit. There is a board available for the laser used having some additional I/O including a hardware enable, but opted not to get it back when it was built (it is a small 50 Watt laser). Thus the only means of t

Re: [Emc-users] stepgen & pwmgen fixes

2008-09-23 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Can you check to see that the pwmgen.enable is working properly. I was running samples all day (which looked great, btw, after resolving a very odd problem) so I did not have a chance to do much testing. I am now dropping the enable when the shutter closes, however the pwmgen.value is s

Re: [Emc-users] stepgen & pwmgen fixes

2008-09-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, It is specified as a parameter to the driver, up to 33Khz IIRC. I was setting it to 5Khz. Regards, Eric Does anyone know what the PWM frequency of the old m5i20 driver is? - This SF.Net email is sponsored by th

Re: [Emc-users] stepgen & pwmgen fixes

2008-09-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Yes, I think they are pretty close to the same, I was just assuming that at some point on the FPGA side, you had to latch and perhaps bit shift the value in the PCI address space, so that it cannot change while you are doing any operations with that value. Otherwise, the value calculat

Re: [Emc-users] stepgen & pwmgen fixes

2008-09-22 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, I am not sure what you mean by the FPGA register. Do you mean the interface register between the driver and the m5i20, or the register actually handling the PWM within the FPGA? As I said in an earlier email (off list), I concur that the value being sent to the FPGA through the interfac

Re: [Emc-users] Latest hostmot2 drivers for m5i20

2008-09-15 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, >> Thanks, this really helps. It shows that the stepgen.enable pins are set to FALSE, thus disabling the stepgen outputs. I added the .enable pin fairly recently. Try adding them to your Xen and Yen nets. << Ok, that makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to check the pins after every

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-12 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Can you tell me what run-time file or files changed? My target machine was built from precompiled packages so it doesn't have the development tools loaded. I will need to compile on my development machine and then transfer the binaries. Thanks, Eric I squished a silly bug with the hos

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, You can find the dmesg output posted here: http://pastebin.com/mfae4a88 Regards, Eric Well that's very odd... Try loading the hostmot2 driver will all debugging enabled: loadrt hostmot2 debug_idrom=1 debug_module_descriptors=1 debug_pin_descriptors=1 debug_modules=1 Then past

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, The dir signal appears to be working properly as well. If .value is 0 or positive, pin 19 is low, if .value is negative then pin 19 is high. As for the PWM, I am measuring it with a meter, not a scope, but it does not change (the voltage measured will typically be proportional to duty

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-11 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, >> Next I'd want to check the electrical state of the IO pins. With SVST8_4, pwmgen.00 appears on pins 15 (PWM), 19 (Dir), and 23 (Not Enable). Bust out a voltmeter and carefully hook it to pin 23. Then twiddle pwmgen.00.enable high and low and see if the voltage on pin 23 varies as e

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-10 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, >> Yep, sounds like all the HAL pins & params are set right. Just to make sure, you've added the hm2_5i20.read() and .write() functions to a realtime thread, and you've started the realtime kernel, right? << Yes. If I had not, then I don't think anything would work. As it is, my step

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-10 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, The enable pin for the PWM is getting set. If I set the enable to true, and then set the value to say 5.0, when I do a show pin I do in fact see that the enable pin is true and that the pwm value pin is 5.0. Per your other email, I would think that this also proves that the scale is se

Re: [Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-09 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, I presumed the selecting of one PWM in the configuration set the direction of the GPIO, as it does for the step and direction outputs for the two steppers in the configuration. Regards, Eric Sebastian is probably the one to ask, but, did you have the driver enable the PWM0? Not the HAL e

[Emc-users] Another problem with Hostmot2 and m5i20

2008-09-09 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian et al, I had just got the stepper outputs working before I went on vacation and am just now getting back to it. I am using Hostmot2, the m5i20 board and SVST8_4 configuration, configured for 2 steppers, 1 pwm and no encoders. I am also using just the patch applied to the most recent bina

Re: [Emc-users] emc2 2.2.6 hostmot2 stepgen bug workaround

2008-08-18 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, I think I got it, at least it is working much better now. I was trying to adjust FERROR, and when that did not work, thought DEADBAND or something like that might apply. What I did not adjust was MIN_FERROR, which the doc says applies only for very slow speeds. I was not having a problem at

Re: [Emc-users] emc2 2.2.6 hostmot2 stepgen bug workaround

2008-08-18 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Any idea what is causing the following errors? I suspect it is the feedback, because as I make the servo period faster, I can then have the motor go faster. I am probably missing something obvious, but it seems like it needs a dead band or something like that, except I tried setting a d

Re: [Emc-users] emc2 2.2.6 hostmot2 stepgen bug workaround

2008-08-18 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, et al, The good news is, the patch seems to work. The bad news is that at other than very slow speeds (25-50 IPM) I keep getting following errors. I have played with the MAX_ACCELERATION and STEPGEN_MAXACCEL (which I suspect does not apply with Hostmot2), but that seems to have almost n

Re: [Emc-users] emc2 2.2.6 hostmot2 stepgen bug workaround

2008-08-16 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, Thanks. I will test it with hardware on Monday. Please see post in emc-developers. Regards, Eric EMC2 2.2.6 included the new hostmot2 device driver, with support for the Mesa 5i20 and 7i43 boards. Unfortunately, due to a bug in the driver, stepgen didn't work on the 5i20 (though it

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Peter, For this project, using all three connectors is fine, it was already wired that way because of the pinout of the standard m5i20 driver. I was just hoping to eliminate one cable and the associated termination. For my next project it would be really nice if I could get all of the I/O onto a

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, So the PWMs appear on the P2 connector, but the Step generators appear on P4? I have the P4 connector going to a 7i37 to handle the high voltage I/O. So I guess I have to move that cable to P3 and remap the I/O. It looks like the TTL I/O can map to either P2 or P4, but it does mean I ne

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, I will send it to you in a couple of hours. I have another commitment for the next hour or two. Regards, Eric Hm, and the hostmot2 pins & functions & stuff were all available in EMC when you ran it? There really should have been something in the logs. Or wait, is RTAPI_MSG_INFO dis

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, I replied off list because the log files were too large for this list. At any rate, I captured the dmesg log by running dmesg > dmesg.txt Right after running EMC. The syslog file looks like everything since I first booted the system this morning. The last entry is at 13:10 (1:10 PM

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, One more quick question. When you say the pinout is written to the system log, which log is that? I don't see it through dmesg or by setting debug to the maximum value. Regards, Eric - This SF.Net email is spons

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, That is interesting. I just checked my settings. The spam setting is set to allow everything through, but to tag what it thinks is spam. I already added sourceforge.net to the white list. I don't see how to get your email address from the posts, but I can try added yours to the white li

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, It must have been filtered out upstream. All of my stuff is registered through GoDaddy so I guess I need to check my spam filter settings and make sure posts from this list are on the white list. Regards, Eric Hmm, I am not showing them (Sebastian's post or Peter's reply). The last post I

Re: [Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, Hmm, I am not showing them (Sebastian's post or Peter's reply). The last post I see from Sebastian was at 1:10 AM EST. I also don't see them in the deleted items tagged as spam, which happens occasionally too. Thanks for the information. Thanks, Eric Didn't you see Sebastian Kuzminsky's

[Emc-users] Hostmot2 configuration - was Stepper Configuration

2008-08-14 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Hi all, I am getting following errors on my axes testing the hostmot2 driver in a 2 axis stepper configuration, and am trying to determine if it is a problem in the configuration, or a problem with the hostmot2 driver. The hostmot2 configuration is specified as: loadrt hostmot2 debug_idrom=1 de

Re: [Emc-users] Stepper configuration

2008-08-13 Thread Eric H. Johnson
John, I commented them out because it generated an error. I do not see pins for maxaccel with hostmot2. > # set stepgen module accel limits - get values from ini file # setp > hm2_5i20.0.stepgen.00.maxaccel [AXIS_0]STEPGEN_MAXACCEL # setp > hm2_5i20.0.stepgen.01.maxaccel [AXIS_1]STEPGEN_MAXACCE

Re: [Emc-users] Stepper configuration

2008-08-13 Thread Eric H. Johnson
Sebastian, I am getting close. I generated a single hal file for a two stepper and one pwm configuration. Currently in the ini file I have it configured for only 2 axes and references only the single hal file. The error I am getting is a following error any time I try to move an axis. I have inclu

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