Machsupport Forum
Mach Discussion => Mach4 General Discussion => Topic started by: cncman172 on May 14, 2015, 04:09:42 PM
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I have MACH4 hobby running with the Ethernet SmoothStepper and can move the motors, home, and all seems pretty good. I decided to start working on my Yaskawa pendant which has a POKEYS 56U inside. This pendant works perfect with MACH3, so figured I would start working on the scripts to make it all work in MACH4.
The issue is when I put the two POKEY plugin files in the plugin directory in MACH4 and restart it I get "Failed to load shared library Mach4PokeysPlugin.m4pw, Error-0, t he operation completed successfully." I am trying the latest plugin on the Po-Labs site which is 1.5.9 dated 4/26/15, and I have tested this with MACH4 version 2336 and the latest 2441.
If I remove the plugins from the plugin directory restart MACH4 it comes up clean with no errors. If I tell MACH4 to add the plugin and point it to another directory with these files MACH4 does not even see these files.
I seen other people say they got the POKEYS plugin to work, I followed the docs, must be doing something stupid or something. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks
Russ
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Just for a test, I have MACH4 demo loaded on my desktop machine and have the ESS plugin installed but no hardware at all. I copied the POKEYS 1.5.9/2336 plugin into the MACH4 plugins directory and started MACH4 with no errors. It finds the POKEYS plugin and has it on the list to configure. Both machines are running Windows 7 professional 64-bit, so this is very strange, one computers works fine and the other given me ERROR "0" completed successfully.
Russ
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I am also getting the same error with the Pokeys plugin. I have tried the latest version and also the previous release of the plugin. The PC is running Win XP SP3. No smooth stepper in this case, I am running the machine via the parallel port with Darwin.
I also tested on another PC that runs Win 7 x64 but doesn't have any hardware attached and found that the Pokeys plugin loaded without any problems.
I would also appreciate any suggestions.
Alastair
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Today, I am going to run an experiment. Thanks Akwell for responding which tells me I am NOT crazy. LOL
Today I am going to disable the plugin for ESS, which is currently my motion device. I would think you can try the same experiment disable Darwin and see if the plugin will install for Pokeys. The logic for this experiment is the POKEY plugin has the ability to be the motion device, so perhaps MACH4 sees you already have a motion device and causes the ERROR 0. That is the only thing I could come up with since you are seeing the same thing and have a different motion plugin in use "Darwin" the parallel port driver by ART, and I have the ESS plugin. More to follow to see if this makes any difference.
Russ
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Well spent another couple hours running experiments in MACH4 with the POKEYS latest plugin, to no avail. Clearly there are more issues with MACH4.
1) Even when I try this on my desktop computer with an Intel i7, 12G of ram, super fast video card, where the plugin loads there are issues. The first issue is if you tell MACH4 to add a plugin and navigate to a directory with the plugin it says nothing matches your search. Keep in mind this is with the same plugin that loads on my desktop when it is placed in the plugin directory. That is clearly a MACH4 bug, navigate to file does not work.
2) On the 2.4GHz Dual Core, with 4G of ram, super fast video card, and Windows7 Pro 64-bit, no matter what I have tried I get the error loading plugin with the ERROR code 0, completed successfully.
3) removing all motion plugins from MACH4 and only having it in simulation mode which was my latest experiment made no difference. The theory was MACH4 did not like seeing a plugin with another motion driver, like the POKEY. I have updated the POKEY to the latest firmware and using the latest plugin make no difference. In fact you don't even need a pokey device to add the pokey plugin on my desktop it finds it and adds it to the list. When I plugin the pokey device USB or Ethernet on my desktop MACH4 allows me to configure the device, so clearly something strange, since both systems are running the exact same version of Window7 and same version of MACH4, the latest, and the latest Pokeys plugin.
The pokeys device is very popular and one of the first several companies to have provided plugins for MACH4. At this point I have no clue if this is a plugin issue or a MACH4 issue. Love to see other users post so the developers would figure out what is wrong.
Russ
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Following the lead by Russ I also tried removing all the other plugins. I can report that I also got the same result, that is, it didn't make any difference.
Alastair
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To follow up for anyone else who may be having the same issue.
In my case the resolution was to install the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable x86 package. It can be downloaded from the link below.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555)
Alastair
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Alastair,
Thank you so much, adding this to my CNC PC also fixed my issue. The reason it worked on my desktop is I already had the compiler installer for other work, so the libraries were already there. Thanks again.
Russ
::)
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Well I have configured my POKEYS unit many times and the unit itself works perfect under MACH3. I discovered several things over the last few days. First the MACH4 plugin does not support LED matrix like it did in the MACH3 plugin which was a huge loss, since that was used on my Yaskawa pendant for light up many LEDs. The other thing was when configuring the matrix keyboard I could get Jog X+,X-,Y+,Y-,Z+ to work but not Z-. Played with this several times and now I have X+,Y+, Z-, Z+ working but X-, Y- will not work. I never could get the table to move with the MPG and you can see on the POKEY diagnostic screen that Pins 1,2 are working perfect. Again, everything works for MACH3, so this is configuration issues on the new MACH4 pokeys plugin and configurations inside of MACH4. One last thing is when you start the MACH4 the LCD will flash and say POKEYS PLUGIN for MACH4 and then that disappears. I never got the X,Y,Z DROs to display on the pendant. The entire configuration of the POKEY in MACH4 is more involved and complex that it was in MACH3. Anyone get this all figured out and working correctly. I also can't job the machine using the keyboard that button does nothing in the latest version.
Russ
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There is a bug in the matrix keyboard setup. To get it to work you have to set an extra row and an extra column. This had been confirmed by PoKeys support. They have also said that matrix keyboard support is not yet fully implemented and that they have to have it done soon. For example you can't pick a key from the matrix keyboard in the pendant tab.
Perhaps matrix LED support will also be added eventually. May be worth an email to suport@poscope.com (http://suport@poscope.com).
They have also indicated that after initial discussions with the developers some of the functions that were in the Mach3 Plugin are now to be handled by Mach4 internally but that the user interface in Mach4 may not be fully implemented yet. For the time being the only option appears to be getting acquainted with Lua scripting. Apparently all the signals are available in the registers.
Alastair
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Alastair,
I did reach out to POKEYS support and they confirmed that right now they do not have the LED support in the MACH4 plugin. They did confirm that would be released soon as they are working on implementing it in the next release. Thank you for the feedback on the keyboard matrix problem, I did this several times and could not get consistent results and figured this was a plugin or MACH4 issue. Unfortunately, the MACH4 developers do not appear to be reading feedback left on this forum as many people continue to find issues but seldom do you see any questions get answered. Hopefully, things will improve as MACH4 does look promising. Thanks Again
Russ
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Russ
I also noticed that the developers do not appear to respond very often on the forum, apart from Art who is very proactive in responding to issues with the Darwin printer port driver.
There seems to be a better chance of getting of getting reply from the developers to posts on the Yahoo group.
I don't want to sound overly critical at this point as it is early days and I was well aware that it would take some time when I purchased. As you say it has great potential.
Alastair
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I was having this same problem. The download that alcwell provided fixed the problem! THANKS!!
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Which download do you have the link? Thanks
Russ
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https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5555
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Chad,
That is the C++ libraries that were required to run the plugin, which does allow it to run. The latest issue is if you enable it and select anything in the plugin to be associated with MACH4 it will run away on all axis associated upon startup. I posted a video on the forum and others have the exact same issue. POKEYS says it is the interface between ESS and MACH4, so right now it is unusable.
Russ
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Russ,
I don't know if I was having that problem or not. I was testing an electrical panel sitting next to my computer. I had 1 servo and 1 stepper hooked up to it but never paid attention to the 2 motors on start up. I have since then put the panel in the machine and am wiring it all up. I will watch for this problem to occur when its ready to go. Might have to set up Mach 3 until this problem is fixed. Thanks.