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- LinuxCNC and stepper motors with feedback (mechaduino or equivalent)
LinuxCNC and stepper motors with feedback (mechaduino or equivalent)
- TheWylieStCoyote
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Has anyone tried any stepper motors with feedback?
I have been looking at mechaduino and some other similar for a router/plasma table I am building. Would it possible to use a serial in place of step and dir pins?
Thanks,
Wylie
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Would it possible to use a serial in place of step and dir pins?
It is possible, my machines both use serially-controlled servo drives.
However, LinuxCNC does not currently have a realtime driver for the PC serial ports (I am not sure why) so you would have to use some alternative hardware.
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- TheWylieStCoyote
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I am and I have a couple of steppers sitting on my self doing nothing at this point that I would like to use. If I was starting from nothing I would be looking at new options.Are you aware of closed loop steppers?
I am not sure that component count is necessarily a good measure of cost, but yeah I agree they are. I had some spare space on a PCB panel I was ordering so I filled it with a couple of things, one was Mechaduino. Just because I thought it was interesting and would give it a try.Given how few components there are on the Mechaduino PCB, it seems very expensive...
What would be involved in writing a realtime serial driver in your opinion?However, LinuxCNC does not currently have a realtime driver for the PC serial ports (I am not sure why) so you would have to use some alternative hardware.
Is it done by a Mesa card or are they not LinuxCNC controlled machines?It is possible, my machines both use serially-controlled servo drives.
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What would be involved in writing a realtime serial driver in your opinion?
I am not sure. I suspect that it would be relatively easy if you can communicate via the serial port with "outb" commands, as the parallel port does, and less easy if you can't.
Is it done by a Mesa card or are they not LinuxCNC controlled machines?It is possible, my machines both use serially-controlled servo drives.
Mesa smart-serial.
There are Mesa modules for "normal" serial, though a little more effort to use.
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retired.beyondlogic.org/serial/serial.htm
Note that linuxcnc.org/docs/2.7/html/man/man9/serport.9.html already does some of the work, source is here
github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/master...drivers/serport.comp
Possibly a good starting point.
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- LinuxCNC
- General LinuxCNC Questions
- LinuxCNC and stepper motors with feedback (mechaduino or equivalent)