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« on: July 24, 2013, 05:03:56 PM »
Hello MR,
If you would sign I could address you properly.
Anyway thanks for your encouragement though I hardly think I need it. This isn't my first rodeo, as they say. I've followed along with Art as he developed Mach since the beginning around 2002; even was able add a couple cents worth here and there; found a couple major bugs. I've been published in Digital Machinist and Home Shop Machinist 10 times, my stuff on the cover twice.
I fumble through the wiring and electronic stuff I need to make my machines run, but electronics are pretty much a mystery. I see that in this new issue of Digital Machinist there is a big article centered on the Arduino. I speed read it and I will read it thoroughly, but I saw enough to know it is way over my head. There are far too many words totally foreign to me, abbreviations, initials. I'm sure the author thinks it's very fundamental, but it 'aint baby; not for this old dog.
Before I bought Pokeys I was about to create a control console using Mach's KeyGrabber and a couple Wingman jotstick controllers; I should have stayed on that path. For me that's easy, take it apart, wire switches, pots, looks totally pro.
However with the help of Matevz I led myself down a path that looked golden but now seems more gravel.
Pokeys is cheap and it is probably a good product; ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,for someone smarter than I.
Arduino is cheap and maybe better than Pokeys; for someone smarter than I.
I wouldn't need to be smart if the docs were better. It took me about 10 minutes to get my Ethernet Smooth Stepper running. Hook this up here, run this wire, on the computer do this, etc. etc., etc.
My uneducated thought is that both Pokeys and Arduino are electronic black boxes that can do many and varied things. For me to make use of them I need someone to make them Mach specific, which may be as simple as writing a PDF. Problem is, how do you make a buck doing that.
I am surprised that Pokeys has a plug-in for Mach, but that no one from Mach is chiming in here on this Mach support forum! The docs for that plug-in are as bombastic as the regular Pokeys manual.
Hey, I still have my keyboard and mouse which work fine, a half dozen of my custom screens which work fine; along with a pretty board full of buttons and knobs.
Ozzie