Oscbe112,

I saw you thread and thought your pendant looked cool.  I am in the middle of a build for a pendant.  Have not gotten to far but thought you could give some insight on the pendant you designed.  I was going to use a Cmore touchscreen at my table to jog axis around, turn vacuum zones on/off, ect.  When I saw you integrated the Arduino to mach3 and saw something that looks to be touch screen on yours it got my brain going.  Do I really need the cmore and all the code to make this work?   I was maybe thinking a 5 or 7" touch screen TFT adapted on the arduino mega maybe with hard estop on the side or front, and a couple of selector switches.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Brooks Nelson

Hi!
Always fun to inspire others, please let us know of your progress.

When it comes to my pendant project I concider it finished. Its not the best approach if you want to be able to change and configure a lot, then you'd better go with a keyboard and map the keys in mach3. But with that said it works great for what I intended.
The only thing that is missing is the handles on the sides (see pictures).. actually bought a 3D printer.. so I'm just lazy to not have done them yet.


So unfortunately I didnt find my arduino sketch but its built on this library: https://sites.google.com/site/jpmzometa/arduino-mbrt/arduino-modbus-slave
On the arduino side I'm just sending commands to the mach3 via modbus, its stored in variables, the brain decides what happens when the variables change.

Sure you could have a screen and touch interface. But I think its a lot of work with arduino.. And also i'd most definitely prefer fysical buttons when interfacing a moving cnc machine..
Just a thought from my side, if you need touchscreen interface, maybe raspberry pie could be an alternative? cheep, hdmi output, usb for interfacing touchscreens, easy to program.