Hi,
don't give up hope yet. I am a relative newbie myself. When some of the wiser heads weigh in
it may well be that there is a suitable plugin or similar.
Writing your on plugin is not for the faint hearted, there is a section of the forum dedicated to such
endeavours. Well worth a look and maybe pose your question there, wiser heads and all.
Another possibility is to write a joystick control routine which works with GBRL. My understanding
is that GBRL is open source so don't imagine it would be any harder than writing a plugin for
Mach and maybe easier.
Another alternative is to convert to Mach3. That would mean throwing away the arduino controller
and replacing it with a breakout board and individual motor drives. This setup is the 'norm' for
Mach3 installations.
The cheapest alternative would be to run a parallel port on you PC. Note that it would have to use
a 32bit OS, Windows7 or earlier, XP is the common standard. The parallel port is the basic standard
of Mach3 and is free and you've got to luv that!
This option would require a breakout board or BOB in the jargon. Its really only an amplifier/buffer
and does not really do anything smart. The cheaper Chinese ones can be had for $10-$20. I would
recommend something better though with American made ones for about $50. I use Austrailian made
units for about the same $50. You would also require stepper drivers. A lot of the Chinese made ones
are based on a driver chip called something like TB3625. They have a reputation for blowing up but
often have 3 or more drivers built into one unit. Given the small steppers you have such a unit maybe
quite adequate and they are really cheap. If you want something better then go for Geko drives, they're
like an asshole....everyones got one! They have a great reputation but be prepared to spend $300 or
so for three of them. I'm not familiar with them myself but believe they make a unit with several
drivers inside.
If you want to use USB or Ethernet output from your PC because of 64 bit OS say then you would require
an external motion controller. The UC100 or Smoothstepper series are very widely used starting at around
$100 for the UC100 and $200 for the Smoothstepper. Depending on the model you probably would still
require a BOB and certainly drivers. There are cheaper Chinese motion controllers but I would avoid them,
their backup is lousy. The sky is the limit with external motion controllers costing many hundreds and even
thousand of dollars, beyond my reach anyway.
Hope this gives you a few choices.
Craig