nickom44 wrote: Hello All,
Total newbie here with regards to Linuxcnc so the question might be naive or covered elsewhere.
From what I can gather the favoured equipment to do the realtime hard grunt stuff seems to be based around some form of Mesa card. Is there information on why an FPGA is considered best option to go for.
Best regards
nick
People choose the Mesa option because it is known to work with minimal hassle and issues. When I say minimal I don't mean easy... That prize still goes to commercial solutions.
Could it be done with a RPI alone? In theory sure. There is no existing working software or hardware setup for that AFAIK. That means you have to write all the drivers and support software yourself. When you get to this point, let us know and I can retire my Mesa cards
When I had a little bit more time I played around with BeagleBone CNC hats and various microcontrollers to drive my lathe and mill. The reoccurring problem with this stuff is that the supplied software is horrendous and integrates with nothing. Some of the best open source solutions remain the GRBL and Marlin firmware, but that's geared towards 3D printers, laser cutters and small routers.
