Messages

81

Finished Plugins for Download / Re: LCD DRo plugin Gravitech board

« on: December 04, 2011, 05:53:46 PM »

Ask and you shall recieve. Here's an updated version of the plugin. Has the ESTOP change already and it was simple to change the format of the display to 4 digits. I would have edited my original post, but I don't see that option anywhere.

82

Mach SDK plugin questions and answers. / programming questions

« on: December 02, 2011, 09:12:57 PM »

Something ODD I noticed while playing with my LCD DRo plugin. I was attempting to use the runtime variable in the CMach4View structure and noticed that it seems to fluctate between 8 and 5 characters long. I'm curious if this is by design or a bug. Also, the esttime variable doesn't seem to ever get filled.

[108116] comport = 6 Show4th axis = 0
[108116] 0 ?y0?x00X: +000.000
[108116] 1 ?y1?x00Y: +000.000
[108116] 2 ?y2?x00Z: +000.000
[108116] runtime 00:00:00
[108116] runtime 00:00
[108116] runtime 00:00:00

One other question I have is how do I get the velocity value that most screen set's display? is that a calculated value or is it the velocity of the current moving axis.

83

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: November 30, 2011, 10:29:02 PM »

I've uploaded a version of my LCD DRO plugin to the plugins forum if anyone is interested. You will find it to be much faster than macropump.m1s. If anyone would like to see anything added, I've put my email address into the LCDDRo.txt file included with the plugin.

84

Finished Plugins for Download / LCD DRo plugin Gravitech board

« on: November 30, 2011, 10:21:44 PM »

Here's a LCD DRo plugin which works with the Gravitech LCD board. There is NO setup, you will need to edit the XML file using the XML reader in the General Mach3 forum. Please READ the LCDDRO.txt file before doing anything though, as it explains what you need todo.

Updates to the display are almost realtime and are MUCH faster than using the chargepump.m1s file and mach3's builtin serial routine. The currect exec line from the running program is displayed along with 3 axis's. An option is availble to display the 4th A Axis. Display will show the value of ESTOP when estop is enabled.  I might change the display output slightly so that DRO's are displayed at all times by moving ESTOP into another place and not clearing the screen.



EDIT: Added updated version of the LCD Plugin and removed old version.

85

General Mach Discussion / Re: Data structure change

« on: November 28, 2011, 08:50:58 PM »

Thanks for the heads up Eric. Once I recompiled using the headers from the MachPluginWizard 1.1a I can say that  it actually works with VS2010. my LCD DRo is now working again.

86

General Mach Discussion / Re: Data structure change

« on: November 28, 2011, 08:08:55 AM »

well that is maybe it then as I'm trying to use vs2010. I knew i should not have upgraded from 2003.

87

General Mach Discussion / Data structure change

« on: November 27, 2011, 11:44:59 AM »

I've been working on a plugin for a LCD display and had the device working quite well except there was no config dialog. I ended up crashing mach3 so I installed the most recent non-release beta version. Now I have a problem in that the display is not picking up the mach3 machine data structure correctly. Has there been a change in the structure between the release and the current beta version?  Also, I've been able to create a problem with mach3 in that I am able to trigger a 9991 art code consistantly. Closing the dialog, causes mach3 to crash. this is extremely repeatable. I'm not modifiying the structures at all, just set up a dialog box and obviuosly incorrectly.

88

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: November 22, 2011, 07:56:42 AM »

Umm mainly because it's a hack and not very pretty. If someone had the capability to finish, I would assume they would have just wrote it.

89

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: November 21, 2011, 11:33:10 PM »

If anyone is interested, I've been playing around at creating a plugin that will do basically what we want are doing with the script. It's working, but I don't have a config menu created for it so it's hardcoded for a particular comport  and is not very forgiving if you suddenly remove the device. If anyone is interested, I'll hardcode a comport into the device, say #10 and upload it to this thread for people to use. Eventually I might finish it.

90

Show"N"Tell ( Your Machines) / Re: How to- USB powered LCD display of DRO`s

« on: November 20, 2011, 02:56:08 PM »

Here's what I've come up with in order to get rid of some latency issues. I found that the serial protocol used was quite slow and seemed to cause a slowdown in the screen update. I don't have a mill yet so I can't test it properly that way, but I've found the following macropump helps somewhat. Putting this screen update into it's own DLL plugin would be the ideal solution though. I've been looking for what other's have done regarding this, but it seems that only commercial ventures which will not share there code are available.


If getVar(1005) = 0 Then
   XV = Format (GetDro(0) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   YV = Format (GetDro(1) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   ZV = Format (GetDro(2) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   AV = Format (GetDro(3) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
   SendSerial  "?c0?f?a?g"
   SendSerial  "?y0?x00 X: " &XV
   SendSerial  "?y1?x00 Y: " &YV
   SendSerial  "?y2?x00 Z: " &ZV
   SendSerial  "?y3?x00 A: " &AV
   setVar(1005, 1)
   setVar(1004, 0)
End If


If getVar(1004) = 10 Then
    setVar(1004, 0)
   
   if getVar(1000) <> Getdro(0) Then
      XV = Format (GetVar(1000) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y0" &XV
      setVar(1000, Getdro(0))
   End If
   
   if getVar(1001) <> Getdro(1) Then
      YV = Format (GetVar(1001) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y1" &YV
      setVar(1001, getDro(1))
   End if
   
   if getVaR(1002) <> Getdro(2) Then
      ZV = Format (GetVar(1002) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y2" &ZV
      setVar(1002, getDro(2))
   End If
   
   if getVar(1003) <> Getdro(3) Then
      AV = Format (GetVar(1003) , "+000.0000;-000.0000")
      SendSerial "?x04?y3" &AV
      setVar(1003, getDro(3))
   End If
else
    setVar(1004, getVar(1004) + 1)
End If