Urgent help required with EMC please

I do not know whether stepgen will work with this or pwmgen.

I would think the stepgen would be the best way, or just connect it directly (or indirectly) to the pulses from your toolchanger. I still question why, wouldn't an on screen display be simpler. Most of linuxcnc guis have a tool number indication already (Axis doesn't but one can easily be added on a custom vcp)

It is basically for external cabinet to give it more of a industrial look. Like you have an external control panel for most modern machines. Like the MPGs, feed override, spindle override buttons, RUN, STOP, JOG button. So I am eventually trying to set external DROs showing tool number, spindle speed and all that stuff for a nice looking external cabinet.

So Todd, can you advise the code with stepgen how can I send 4 pulses with a little delay in each for my tool no. 4, for example to basically any output pin on the parallel port. How will the code look like. It is just like telling a STEPPER to take 4 steps from the current position. Hope you got my point.

The code should be very simple but as you know I am very new to this. I do not know how could I have been able to develop my own fully working ATC comp with you guys helping me understand things for the first time in my whole life with linuxcnc.

So as I said, the code should be pretty simple as only one pin is required to output pulses equal to the tool number set while tool changing process.

I am probably mature enough now to handle the comp side stuff and where to put the code to basically set a variable to the set tool number. But then onviously I need to transfer that number to hal so it outputs the same number of pulses to output pin. That hall side and loading stepgen and assigning an input pin in hal, and an output pin in the comp is where I am confused.

And Todd, bytheway, my ATC is working perfect now. I have with you guys help managed to write a comp that is actually working with my setup. Thank you all.

And I know I can connect it directly to the opto output which I am feeding into the linuxcnc so I can take an output directly from that pin. But my toolchanger has 6 tools so after the number is 6, it will need a reset, for that I will need to build an external circuit to count externally too so when the count reaches 6, it resets. So doing it within the software logic is much easier at the moment rather than building a new PCB outside. But thank you for the suggestion, that is indeed another very professional way to manage this.

I was looking at gmoccapy gui. Can I switch the gui with my ini file setting alone or there are files involved to be compiled and all that stuff, or is it just the settings in ini file which do the whole job?

you dont need to to a reset externaly , use another comp to count from the tool and give another pin a reset logic output to another pin after 6 counts , you have available and or nor logic within linuxcnc .

changing to gmocappy is done in your ini config , their are examples in your linuxcnc config menu picker
and also in the documentation , and wiki

For the simple mechanical solution, could you just use your tool #1 index pulse as the reset?