Ah... OK Hood Just thought you found a way to somehow incorporate it on your BOB, but looks like you'd still run another (serial?) cable to your PC. So still looks like a Pokeys is a better way to go.

Dan

Only drawback to PoKeys is its 5v I/O but as long as its close to the switches or whatever that shouldnt be an issue. The Ethernet version is even better I think and it is what I would use if using the PoKeys on any other machines.

Will see if I can calm Brett down enough to get some sense out of him rather than the excited gibberish 

Hood

The Arduino does look very capable and flexible indeed, but it's a bit like reinventing the wheel when trying to achieve with it what the Pokeys already does and is specifically designed for.

Dan

Brett was talking about all sorts of things which the PoKeys cant do but will have to talk with him more to see whats involved.

Hood

Hi,

I've been doing a bit of testing with the ESS myself. I have it running alongside a prototype of my new ModIP.  The ModIP provides modbus over Ethernet, and adds a lot of new functionality. Together, they should allow for a really nice Ethernet driven system.

I'm still working out the final form factor(s) for the board. That the difficult part.

Cheers,

Peter.

Good to here the ESS is working well for you, so far its been bullet proof for me.

Hood

LOL

Will see if I can calm Brett down enough to get some sense out of him rather than the excited gibberish 

Hood

That is true Hood.  At this point it's just excited thinking out loud.  The potential a well designed BOB would have with its on microprocessor just makes me a little giddy.    It's practicality is still to be decided though.

I also need to apologize for a few things.  One is I had forgot today is Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!
Two is that Thanksgiving eve I was to tent camp with my boys and some friends and get up this morning and go deer hunting. 
Three, is that we didn't get a deer. 
 Four is the fact that I have had 4 hours sleep in the past 55 hours and still have a turkey to eat this evening.     

I hope to catch you this evening.
Brett

I took the top of one of my STDR-4C controllers, swapped in an ESS for the USB SmoothStepper, set it all up with four steppers and a long Ethernet cable wrapped up in the Stepper cables. Then I ran it and ran it and ran it and it did not miss a beat. Next I carted everything out to the shop to try something 'noisier'. (As my daughter saw me carrying stuff to the shop she asked what I was doing and I said, "I'm going to try and break this board with the plasma cutter". You should have seen the horrified look on her face . Then I explained that I was not really not going to cut the board...)

I fired off my plasma cutter within 6" of the bare ESS board and it still worked fine. Even firing it for 30 seconds did not stop the ESS, the Ethernet cable was picking up the interference, the ESS compensated though and completed all moves! I've worked with about all the name brand CNC controls for plasma systems and don't know of another that would have kept working in similar conditions.

The changeover from the USB SS to the ESS is really simple. They are the same form factor and one plugs in in place of the other. As Hood mentioned Port3 is now a full port but otherwise it looks/feels the same and is easy to set up/use. Greg manage to pack a lot more hardware on the same PCB this time so I'm sure we will all have our socks knocked of with future enhancements.

Good to hear Jeff, I think Greg has done a very nice job with these, I did like the USB one and never really had any noise related issues but the ESS is much nicer
One other difference is you must supply 5v to the ESS, not a problem for me as I already did that for the USB SS but some others may have just used USB power to supply the USB SS.

Hood

That is a good point Hood, you do need an external 5V power source.