Art's Darwin is available and runs great, I'd seen at the IMTS show that machmotion had I believe ESS, Galil and Hycon running. Thou at the time only three axis were active. As far as a lathe screen one is provided with mach4 and you do have the option to alter or create your own. I have one in progress along with my Mill screen, and try to keep them somewhat updated as I learn more and apply what i feel I will need for my future projects. Thou have to admit, have not even tried whether they are touch screen compatible. Good question. I have tested Darwin, Galil and the ESS Plugins. So have to say they are closer then you might think. But still a ways to go before all is ready for prime time.

here's a nice little functional thing to know

I need to map a screw so I created a little routine that gives me the counts (in the history box) of the steps for the position i am at.
Put at the end of the plc script file for in this case "motor 2" my Z
it only updates if it has changed from the last plc scan.
So now I can move to a position and get the number of counts from home (don't forget to reference your axis to start this, - sets it back to zero)


counts2,rc = mc.mcMotorGetPos(inst, 2, 0);
if (oldcounts2 ~= counts2) then
   mc.mcCntlSetLastError(inst, "counts = " ..tostring(counts2));
   oldcounts2 = counts2;
end

so my understanding is that this is what the Motor_2_Map.dat file should look like
Seeing it's not ready yet, its just a prod to get er done.

0,669905,7,0,47277,107740,188578,297665,445703,669905


--consist of the following info
-- start counts,length counts,num points, point0 count, point1 count, point3 count,...

Is there a way I can read encoder outputs from Darwin, do the count to position translation based on metric/imperial, and display the results on DROs like M3 settings tab?  I can't find how to get at the encoder outputs from Darwin.

Your not reading encoder counts, I'm accessing the counts that mach4 sent to the drive.
So it does not matter what device/plugin you have interfaced with your drives. its all about steps or counts; which ever you want to call em.

As in my example above 1" travel is 55000 counts per unit, that was setup in the "Z" motor 2 configuration screen.

You could monitor the pulse stream at your break out board (BOB) that darwin is sending. But not necessary,  unless you have an issue with losing steps/position. But that I would suspect a noise issue with wiring, a bad connection or loose physical couplings. (top three)

So the short answer is there is no encoder outputs from darwin.

Ya-Nvr-No,

I'm not sure if your last post was in reply to my question.  If so, we are not on the same page and I'd like to push the reset and start again.

In Mach 3, on the setting tab, there is a group of 3 DROs in the section called 'Encoder position".  These DROs show the counts from encoders and reflect the position of the axes.  They are not driven by Mach 3.  I use these in the manual mode (no pulses from Mach 3, drivers disabled) as my DROs for manual operation.  I want to duplicate them in Mach 4.  Darwin has configuration screens for encoders but I don't see where the pulses are passed to Mach 4.  I fully understand there would only be counts and it would be up to me or the designer of the DROs to turn this into meaningful positions according to the counts per unit.

The first question is how do I capture the counts being sent to Mach 4?  Do the encoder outputs need to be mapped as input signals in Darwin as well as encoders?

Thanks

Peter

Mach4 is not like mach3 so there is no encoder features other than MPG dial reading ability that darwin uses/calls them. Might be down the road that they will get added but as of yet, nope.

Ya-Nvr-No,

Thank you, that explains a lot.  It also says Mach 4 does not support MPGs to control jogging.

Peter

did you miss how i'm using MPG with Darwin?

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,27162.msg197715.html#msg197715

Yes, because I can't do it with the latest versions (1.2075).   

What's the difference between seeing an encoder input and an MPG input?

Peter