raspberry pi or beaglebone for stand alone indexer

Ive done several lathes and mills with a full PC and lcnc. Right now I have a need for a stand alone indexer controller that would be toggled by an m code and relay from a yasnac control. It seems like a full mother board is an over kill for one rotary axis. Would one of these micro computers pull.off this task? I have no experience with them and just thinking out loud. Thanks.

JR1050 wrote:

Ive done several lathes and mills with a full PC and lcnc. Right now I have a need for a stand alone indexer controller that would be toggled by an m code and relay from a yasnac control. It seems like a full mother board is an over kill for one rotary axis. Would one of these micro computers pull.off this task? I have no experience with them and just thinking out loud. Thanks.

They could, but there are several considerations.

They have ARM processors and Linuxcnc does not support ARM.

They have no parport or serial port, just USB, so in themselves they cannot run anything much, they require capes to add sufficient IO etc
When you start adding all the bits together, it is debateable if they would be cheaper than a second hand PC.

You would have to use Machinekit to get a ready made image for SD card and immerse yourself in the BBB learning curve, to do what you could do almost without thinking with a normal x86 computer and Linuxcnc

Unless you are considering actually building the board into the indexer, I know which I would choose.

regards

Thanks. I wasn't thinking about expense as much as small compact package. I think the path is clear. Thanks again.