Commander SK VFD

The cheap spindle on my router has failed (frozen water cooling damage???). I have a nicer spindle and a Commander SK VFD on the shelf that I planned on using as an upgrade. I use the gs2-vfd component for my router and mill and I use PWM with a Minarik inverter to control my lathe. I prefer the serial communications for controlling and monitoring the VFD. The new spindle and Commander work up to 1000hz, the GS-2 only goes to 400hz or I would have stuck with that. I do have the "Advanced User Guide for the Commander SK" that lists all the parameter to register mappings, but I need to decide on components to replace gs2-vfd.

It appears the choices are:
1) mb2hal (standard linuxcnc component)
2) vfdmod (unsupported???)
3) classic ladder (probably overkill for what I need)
4) mesa modbus (7i92)

Question #1 Can anyone can share a working Commander SK mb2hal setup.

Question #2 Is there any advantage to using a mesa serial port over the computer rs232 port for communication with VFDs? I currently use RS232 to RJ12 cables between computer and VFDs. 



 

I doubt this is all that helpful, but I did write a custom VFD module for a Commander SK over RS485/modbus, about a dozen years ago (for LinuxCNC 2.6 .. ancient stuff).  Here is the code, in case there's any value for you:

github.com/tangentaudio/cmdrsk_vfd

I'm going to revamp that machine soon and I most likely would choose one of the methods you're thinking about rather than stick with a custom component.
 

I'm waiting on a RS232/EIA485 adapter for the Commander SK. The GS2 is nice in that it has dip switches settings to work with either.
While waiting, I tested out GS2-VFD.ini that allows me to control the GS2 using mb2hal. Now that I understand mb2hal it shouldn't take long to test out my CommanderSK.ini.

This is pretty much a drop in replacement for the gs2_vfd component. gs2_vfd is nicer as it doesn't need some conv_bit_s32 conversions and some scaling. gs2_vfd also handles braking which would need additional transactions to implement. 

When the adapter arrives, I will post a working CommanderSK.ini for mb2hal.

When the EIA485 adapter arrives, I may give your code at try. mb2hal works but it isn't as nice to use as gs2_vfd that your code is based on.