Machsupport Forum

Mach Discussion => General Mach Discussion => Topic started by: adamj12b on October 02, 2016, 12:39:41 AM

Title: Mach3 or Mach4 MDI Serial Input
Post by: adamj12b on October 02, 2016, 12:39:41 AM

Hello Everyone,

I am trying to find a way to send Mach 3 or Mach4 (Im Flexible) MDI commands threw a serial interface.

I have searched the forums but mostly find results for modbus.

Any ideas will be very much appreciated.

Thank You

-Adam

Title: Re: Mach3 or Mach4 MDI Serial Input
Post by: joeaverage on October 03, 2016, 06:32:28 AM

Hi,
I'm not sure is the short answer.

The longer answer is I think its possible.

If you sent a text string corresponding to a Gcode line then Mach could execute that
line by line.

If using M3 then something like:

while(true)
   gcodeLine=(a text string from serial input device)
   if(gcodeline !='EOF')then
         code(gcodeLine)
   else
          break
   end
end

Please not my VB skill is absolute rubbish and the chances of that working as is nill but
the idea should work.

I have only recently bought a licence for Mach4 so can't say for sure that this will work
but there is a 'serial plugin' in M4 which sounds rather hopeful for what you wish to achieve.

Loop
Get some serial data from the plugin;
construct a Gcode line from that data;
mc.mcCntlGcodeExecute(inst,yourGcodeLine)
end loop.

The Lua scripting language in Mach4 is a bit baffling to start with but its ultimate flexibility
and power exceeds VB. If you're going to write scripts and so on I think Lua is where you
should invest the effort. Certainly that was the conclusion I came to. Whereas Mach3 is good
Mach4 is shaping up to being brilliant.

Craig

Title: Re: Mach3 or Mach4 MDI Serial Input
Post by: mrprecise44 on October 03, 2016, 01:30:17 PM

Why do you need tp do MDI (Manual Data Input) by Serial interface?

Mach3 was not designed to use a Serial input format.