How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

[lajoolaj]

is it possible to have two displays 4x20 thought USB???

[lajoolaj]

on first i want have X,Y,Z,A
and on second Feed, Speed...

[cd_edwards]

get a larger display. 4x20 is the size of the gravitech unit. Should be able to have all of that on there as it is. The Sure Electronics display I could not get working. It requires something that I didn't get figured out. I ordered a gravitech unit to replace it. The command sequence for the gravitech and the LCD Smartie display's are totally differant.

[cd_edwards]

Here's what I've come up with in order to get rid of some latency issues. I found that the serial protocol used was quite slow and seemed to cause a slowdown in the screen update. I don't have a mill yet so I can't test it properly that way, but I've found the following macropump helps somewhat. Putting this screen update into it's own DLL plugin would be the ideal solution though. I've been looking for what other's have done regarding this, but it seems that only commercial ventures which will not share there code are available.


If getVar(1005) = 0 Then
   XV = Format (GetDro(0) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   YV = Format (GetDro(1) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   ZV = Format (GetDro(2) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   AV = Format (GetDro(3) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   SendSerial  "?c0?f?a?g"
   SendSerial  "?y0?x00 X: " &XV
   SendSerial  "?y1?x00 Y: " &YV
   SendSerial  "?y2?x00 Z: " &ZV
   SendSerial  "?y3?x00 A: " &AV
   setVar(1005, 1)
   setVar(1004, 0)
End If


If getVar(1004) = 10 Then
    setVar(1004, 0)
   
   if getVar(1000) <> Getdro(0) Then
      XV = Format (GetVar(1000) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y0" &XV
      setVar(1000, Getdro(0))
   End If
   
   if getVar(1001) <> Getdro(1) Then
      YV = Format (GetVar(1001) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y1" &YV
      setVar(1001, getDro(1))
   End if
   
   if getVaR(1002) <> Getdro(2) Then
      ZV = Format (GetVar(1002) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y2" &ZV
      setVar(1002, getDro(2))
   End If
   
   if getVar(1003) <> Getdro(3) Then
      AV = Format (GetVar(1003) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y3" &AV
      setVar(1003, getDro(3))
   End If
else
    setVar(1004, getVar(1004) + 1)
End If   

[cd_edwards]

If anyone is interested, I've been playing around at creating a plugin that will do basically what we want are doing with the script. It's working, but I don't have a config menu created for it so it's hardcoded for a particular comport  and is not very forgiving if you suddenly remove the device. If anyone is interested, I'll hardcode a comport into the device, say #10 and upload it to this thread for people to use. Eventually I might finish it.

[Ya-Nvr-No]

Why not post the source and someone might just finish it for ya.

[cd_edwards]

Umm mainly because it's a hack and not very pretty. If someone had the capability to finish, I would assume they would have just wrote it.

[cd_edwards]

I've uploaded a version of my LCD DRO plugin to the plugins forum if anyone is interested. You will find it to be much faster than macropump.m1s. If anyone would like to see anything added, I've put my email address into the LCDDRo.txt file included with the plugin.

[cd_edwards]

I updated the LCD DRo plugin I wrote. The comport is NOT hardcoded, but you do have to manually edit the xml file using the XML reader. I still do not have working menu's. It seems it's easy to crash Mach3 when adding menus. Anyways, it's over in the plugin's forum

[danmega]

Can I use a DB25 cable to with this lcd setup? reason being is I have a 30' run. I don't see many 50' usb cable around.