LinuxCNC + Orange Pi (allwincnc)

I forgot that allwinners etc were not made with open boards in mind. It seems that we need to stick with small fully open STMs/whatever and made out own modules.

I think that the Allwinner boards are fine for LCNC as long as we can get a regular supply of them, and if future generations keep the integrated MCU. Being able to run LCNC all on the same low cost board is nice for low cost and saves space. It is just bad timing currently with the world shortage of semiconductors. Even some STM32's have 6-12 month leads times right now.

I have been following the pine64 boards a bit and they have also been using the Rockchip ARM SOC's with integrated MCU's. They are also facing chip shortages as well.  pine64.com/product-category/single-board-computers/

Bari wrote:

I think that the Allwinner boards are fine for LCNC as long as we can get a regular supply of them, and if future generations keep the integrated MCU. Being able to run LCNC all on the same low cost board is nice for low cost and saves space. It is just bad timing currently with the world shortage of semiconductors.

I agree.
I use it on a small milling machine, China type 3040. On an OrangePi PC with 1GB of RAM.
It works nicely, is small, cheap and with minimal power consumption.
Because I bought this OPi PC before, the price was an incredible $ 15, free shipping.

Even if future generations of allwinners will keep integrated RISC, I'm quite afraid of porting all drivers to every new board.... I hope that it would not be so problematic.

By the way is the orangePi H3 the best board that is usable for this project? Are any others working?

The MCU used in the Allwinner ARM SOC's is an Open RISC design. I wish I had a list of all the Allwinner devices that use them.
The OrangePi's aren't the most rugged or industrial made boards out there but these are a better match for all the hardware required to run LCNC or machinekit on a single board. They have the ARM cores to run Linux, the GPU to run a GUI and an integrated MCU for real time high speed step generation. I'd be happy to spin a board with the ARM SOC and the ruggedized IO required for industrial applications.

linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner_SoC_Family

linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix

www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm/sunxi.html

linux-sunxi.org/AR100

openrisc.io/

github.com/openrisc

mwidlok wrote:

By the way is the orangePi H3 the best board that is usable for this project? Are any others working?
 

I am voting for OPi PC.
Look for an H3 with a long pinheader and at least 1 MB of RAM.

I also tested EtherCAT on it. It worked.
But it would be better to create a native EtherCAT IRQ-free driver for it.
It's in my long-long-term plan.

I think you meant 1GB of RAM but yeah!