Hello Guest it is March 28, 2024, 04:24:04 PM

Author Topic: Has anyone created any Mach4 screens so we can explore its abilities?  (Read 14252 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline BR549

*
  •  6,965 6,965
    • View Profile
By the time you get all the bells and whistles that $600 card may be a $1000 card. We may be looking at the same one(;-)

SO yes the GUI side most be complete as well. At least up to modern CNC standards.

HOPEFULLY there WILL be a good integration manual for Lua and Mach4.

(;-) TP

Offline simpson36

*
  •  1,369 1,369
    • View Profile

 . .  we can review your code and its interaction with your screen to learn from your coding.
Eg. I would like to have some script that allows me to have mutually exclusive buttons (if you press one the others turn off) on the screen with LEDs.

If someone has already done this it would save me a lot of time.
Basically I am looking for code / script snippets that I can use on my screens / machine.
thanks


There is a MACH4 specific section in the forum. There is a lot of screen information and examples posted there, including doing context sensitive buttons (one button brings up more buttons or disables/enable other buttons) that you want.

http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,29442.0.html

Offline simpson36

*
  •  1,369 1,369
    • View Profile
My fear is that Mach4 screens will be specific to a user's particular setup and hardware, and will not be easy to share with others.
(Meaning that they'll be easy to share, but may not work for others)

Having worked with both MACH3 and MACH4 screens, I would say MACH4 will be more difficult to make 'universal' but certainly not impossible. Unconfigurable screens created for specific purpose would not transfer well, obviously, but if the goal from the beginning of the project is to make a configurable (i.e. saleable) MACH4 screen set, I have not run into anything that would prevent that.

In the same way the Kflop is far more powerful that smoothstepper, that capability comes at a cost. You cannot integrate a Kflop with 'checkbox programming'.  MACH4 screens  taste like that to me. Making a purpose built MACH4 screen is not difficult or complicated, but to create a configurable set is an entirely different and far more complicated task.

The stumbling block, in my view, will be writing a configurator to fill the boatload of parameters that would be needed for a 'universal' screen set. For MACH specifically, I have written configurators in VB script , C# and C++ (for Windows programs), and now in LUA, both stand alone and 'widgets'. The first widget too far longer than ALL of the screen mods. There is some documentation available now that should make this mine field less painful to navigate.
Re: Has anyone created any Mach4 screens so we can explore its abilities?
« Reply #13 on: November 30, 2019, 01:32:32 PM »
I recently installed MACH 4 hobby

I'm looking for some additional screen set options.

The last input on this topic was over 4 years ago, I'm surprised there are no new posts  on screen sets for MACH 4.

In addition, I cannot find the proper contrast settings to get a decent "image backgrounds to tool path".

I have tried editing the screen but can't seem to find the proper setting for the color of the part being machined.

This contrast issue was in the original post and has not been addressed as of yet.

Any help on this contrast setting would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I would really like to see some optional screen sets that I may use.

thanks,
Chuck



Offline SimonRafferty

*
  •  46 46
  • Movie SFX Design Engineer
    • View Profile
Re: Has anyone created any Mach4 screens so we can explore its abilities?
« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2020, 05:45:41 PM »
From the conversations I've had with people who have built their own screensets, they seem to fall into two, maybe three categories.

Either they feel that it's too specific to their machine such that the code would require modifying extensively - and they don't want to provide support for that.

Or, because there is code embedded in the screens, they are worried about the potential liability if something goes wrong and damages your machine (or you!).

A partial third seems to be that if you are capable of modifying code to run with your hardware, you are capable of building your own screen.

The net result is there are practically no third party screen sets for Mach4.

It seems a shame as the number of people who are a machinist, competent programmer, have spare time - and a graphic designer is pretty small!
Re: Has anyone created any Mach4 screens so we can explore its abilities?
« Reply #15 on: March 03, 2021, 02:05:41 PM »
From the conversations I've had with people who have built their own screensets, they seem to fall into two, maybe three categories.

Either they feel that it's too specific to their machine such that the code would require modifying extensively - and they don't want to provide support for that.

Or, because there is code embedded in the screens, they are worried about the potential liability if something goes wrong and damages your machine (or you!).

A partial third seems to be that if you are capable of modifying code to run with your hardware, you are capable of building your own screen.

The net result is there are practically no third party screen sets for Mach4.

It seems a shame as the number of people who are a machinist, competent programmer, have spare time - and a graphic designer is pretty small!

I'd love to see some screens posted anyway, I've got the coding part down, so modifying them to work wouldn't be too hard. Graphic design is not in my skillset however so I just want a starting point.

Offline Graham Waterworth

*
  • *
  •  2,668 2,668
  • Yorkshire Dales, England
    • View Profile