Messages

51

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 28, 2011, 03:07:34 AM »

Mach will *NEVER* send anything on USB - it has to be your plugin which takes Mach data and sends it itself.
Have a look at some my routines - PC side for FT245R chip ( USB-> Parallel FIFO) converter and LPC1769 code to get data from it.

If this is too complicated - then wait until you try to extract motion data from Mach....

52

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 26, 2011, 09:44:19 AM »

Use external USB/ serial port or fifo controller. It adds about 19$ to the cost ( for ready made DIP style module from DigiKey ), but it is easier in the beginning.

53

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: March 25, 2011, 03:21:37 PM »

This is virtual plugin  designed to show Mach internals. So no real USB - just software emulation of it.
But - if you are asking about it - it depends on your particular USB device.   For most of my USB devices sending data is like writing to FIFO or file.  If you are interested in real examples see libusb project (http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/libusb-win32/wiki) or FTDI library (http://www.ftdichip.com/Support/SoftwareExamples/CodeExamples.htm)

54

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Motion plugin for virtual hardware(for tests) - lets share our knowledge

« on: February 25, 2011, 10:12:23 AM »

Hi,

I have my own USB CNC controller ( something close to ncPod - 120Mhz Arm Cortex CPU capable of about 100kHz operation). It works with different software then Mach.
I wanted to to write Mach plugin for it, but there is no good documentation for it. There are few people who know it quite well, but this knowledge is commercially valuable , so nobody was interested to join me.

I have it quite alive. There are few things missing ( like input/output processing, homeing, jog operation), but basic motion works. There is also console windows to dump all interesting internals
I decided to share it before finishing as there are some other people working on similar design (http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,17602.0.html)

So - please have a look at sources, play with it.
It is free to use as long as you share your knowledge to make it really good template for starting own motion plugins.

You need Visual C++ Express 2010 to compile it.
You will need to change in project post processing step - to accomodate path to your Mach directories.
In case your console window is too small - change it . Once changed it will keep setting for consequiteve runs.

55

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Write a plugin for USB

« on: February 25, 2011, 09:58:43 AM »

I have cracked it a bit :-) - I also have USB controller. It works with different software then Mach, I wanted to enable it with Mach as well.
I will create separate thread for it - so we can join our efforts

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,17612.0.html

56

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion planner - cubic moves in GMoves

« on: August 29, 2010, 04:57:42 PM »

Hi,

Nice that I finally found somebody who wants to share info about it.

My controller is something like ncPod or Smoothstepper. It uses LPC1769 with ethernet (working on proto now, previous production version was on LPC2148 ). Even without FPGA ( like smoothstepper) it is capable of 100kHz pulsing for 4 axis. Good enough for most people, want to target low-end market.Originally designed for other software then Mach, but I wanted bigger audience for it. It is my hobby - for living I design equipment for low voltage power networks.

As far as I understand the available documents, you get the movements in real time plus 2 seconds. So you have to be careful if dynamic of your system does not match the one setup in Mach - if you use much faster settings, you will stall your controller - Mach most likely will not give you more data these 2 seconds ahead.

Good that you know something about axis slaving - that was also a question on my list.

How to proceed ? I have an idea worth trying. I thought of creating 'virtual'  motion plugin. The control device would be just an emulation software located on local ethernet port.  I would also add doxygen tags and all findings - mine and yours, plus everything else extracted from the documentation.
This would create nice help file with tags, references and a lot of sections with questions.
I would be ready to spend some time on it on one condition - we get somebody from Mach developers to review our plugin and answer our questions. So we create together new motion plugin example to be put to SDK - so everybody  benefits.
Any idea how to involve them - emaybe new topic like "Artsoft help us - support our initiative?"

57

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Re: Motion planner - cubic moves in GMoves

« on: August 28, 2010, 04:32:59 AM »

Hi,

My basic question was - can I setup Mach in a way that I get only linear motion ? According to specs you can get
'int type;    // 0 is linear, 1 is circular'
By testing on live device I actually get value 2. This basically mean that I get absolute end coordinates every GMoves structure.
I would like to know what happens when Mach gets circular motion - whether I can configure Mach trajectory planner to approximate circles with linear motion or I get circular motion anyway and I have to deal with it myself.

There is no specs about it and it is hard to find from milions of useless undocumented variables in Mach structures.
U used wizard to use basic plugin design. And I get some reasonable coordinates. Note that in the beginning trajectory controller sends a lot of empty moves ( with zero coordinates and time equal to zero). If you like, I can send it to you - connect debugger and you will see the results.


Basically - I would like to get same info as you. My device was originally developed for different control software, which prepares whole trajectory offline and sends as big package to the controller ( I do have 64 Mbit SDRAM). I have my own trajectory planner which calculates acceleration/deceleration for the whole path.
I was trying to get info ( on theforum) how to get whole trajectory at once ( even as GMOves - I would process them and combine into my format).
But nobody answered. I have sent private message to Art - also no answer.

For good or bad - we are condemned to experimenting on our own. There were some changes in Mach since the motion plugin examples were created. And nobody updated them. Few people who made it working pay high price for that and as they created commercial projects - they do not want to share the knowledge. And there is not much help from Mach designers.

My feeling is that these motion plugins which work (like SmoothStepper, NcPod , maybe DSPMC ) were created with Art's help (as there were some notes about it on the forum).

58

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Motion planner - cubic moves in GMoves

« on: July 15, 2010, 06:46:10 AM »

Hi,

I have been developing motion plug in for my hardware.
I have studied documentation and code examples. My hardware is quite close to ncPod, so that was the base for me.
Could you help me with following questions ?

1) According to the doc GMoves can be cubic ( so instead of linear motion  you get circular - with endpoints and circle origin). I have studied ncPod plugin and it seems it ignores the info ( GMoves.type) and treats everything as linear motion. Can I force Mach to get only linear motion - not to process these cubic motions myself ( with linear approximation ) ?

2) Coordinates sync between external hardware and Mach. Is it so that during GCode motion Mach assumes that all vectors send are executed and the coordinate is the final coordinate of last vector ? I have seen some coordinate feedback to Mach only while jog processing ( and in quite strange units - Engine->Axis[..].Index which is integer - means pulses ?? )

Thanks for your help

PS. Link to the doc http://www.machsupport.com/MachCustomizeWiki/index.php?title=The_G100/GREX_plugin_as_a_model_for_device_control

59

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / Is it possible to get all movments (vectors) at once ( want to store in flash)

« on: August 28, 2008, 08:57:26 AM »

Hi,

I have developed my own motion controller ( work still under progress).  It was designed for some other type of control software, but I wanted to create Mach plug-in for it.
It uses a bit different approach - I create a vector file which is sent with USB to device NAND flash memory. Then you press button and 5 ARM7 processors ( one main LPC2378 and four LPC2013 for axis) start processing the program.

I checked the example plugins - the movements are given synchronously. Is there a way to get them all at once in a nice way ? ( I could always just 'cheat' and get store them instead of executing, but then I would not have Mach to show progress and all other stuff).

Basically - I would like to get the whole trajectory first, store it to my device and then send back Mach the trajectory progress. Is it possible ?