Very basic Pnconf questions - daughter boards

Sorry, had a space in the url (fixed now)

Thanks got it.
I pushed a fix to 2.5 branch.

its an easy fix to edit manually if you don't wish to upgrade.

In pncconf, find every line like this:

for i in range(1,9)

and changed to :

for i in range(1,6)

Chris M

Thanks Chris,

I re-installed Linux from the live CD, upgraded to 2.5.4 but the changes don't seem to have made it through, so I edited the file manually. It's creating the config fine, but there's some odd behaviour with accounts. I have to run Pncconf using gksudo in the shortcut or I get a "permission denied" error for the firmware files. This works fine, but puts all the configs and desktop shortcuts in the Root account, which I can't then use / edit easily from the normal user account - Linux has always driven me nuts with the Root account thing!

Any ideas? I can certainly work with this, although I will no doubt have some more questions as I get further along.

Hugh

The bug fixes wont be updated till the next release, unless you are using buildbot or compiling from source.

I would think the permissions on the firmware and/or the folder is not right.

my folder allows access to others and the file is read-only to others.

Obviously you should never have to run PNCconf as root.

Chris M

scruffythefirst:

I have to run Pncconf using gksudo in the shortcut or I get a "permission denied" error for the firmware files.

There are 2 approaches to this.

One is to change ownership of the firmware files to yourself (as root or use sudo)
chown -R youruser:youruser /dir-with-firmware-files
chmod -R 644 /dir-with-firmware-files/*

The other is to add yourself to the group which owns the files
useradd -G groupname youruser

This second way is OK if that group is not root, if it is, you are better off using the first method.

regards

Thanks everyone for your help, I've managed to generate a config to start from. Please could someone tell me how to change my hal file for a 7i66-8 and 7i84 cards (I generated the config with 2x 7i64 as they aren't' supported yet)

I assume I just need to change my hal pins from

To this

Also, I see it is possible to read the analogue inputs on the 7i84 inputs 0-3 in mode 1. I can't see anywhere in the hal or ini file where this is set, and how to connect this to (and create the) 256 values for Spindle override, Manual feedrate or FRO. Searching for analogue input brings up lots of results, but nothing comprehensive enough for me to follow.

first, with specific pin/parameter names its alway best to list what you have with

when linuxcnc is started

rather than guess at the names

sserial mode setting is described in the hostmot2 manual

I think I get the smart serial mode selection now, just to confirm the 7i52 has 1 port with 6 channels, numbered 0-5 and physically connected to their own pins (not daisy chained).

In which case, to set the mode to 2 for a smart serial card connected on port 0, channel 2, I would change the modparam line in my hal file to

I haven't got the 7i52 yet, so LinuxCNC won't load this config, is there another way to get the allhal.txt.

I'm getting more confident that I can make this config work, so unless you can think of a reason not to, I'll order the remaining cards (7i52, 7i84, 7i66-8)

Thanks for all the help so far.

linuxcnc should load as long as the hal file doesn't reference pins that are not available

Theres also not much point to reading all the available pins
until you have your sserial devices connected since their pins will not show up


if you want to see what pins are available without starting linuxcnc you can do it all with halrun:

halrun
halcmd: loadrt hostmot2
halcmd: loadrt hm2_pci config="firmware=hm2/5i23/5i23_7i48_7i52.bit num_encoders=12 num_pwmgens=6 sserial_port_0=02000 "
halcmd: show all

note I think you have the case wrong in the bitfile name which will cause a file not found error

Also sserial device channels are numbered starting at 0 so the mode numbers
in the config string refer to CHAN0,CHAN1,CHAN2 etc so your 0200 string is
setting channel 1 to mode 2.

Thanks, I renamed to .BIT as all the linuxcnc supplied files were in caps. I also commented out all the 7i64 IO lines, and it now runs!

I'll order the cards and see how I get on. The man hostmot2 doesn't show anything specifically for the 7i84 or 7i66, I guess I have to wait until I can do show all with the cards connected to get the analogue pin names. Once I have these, how would I go about converting the float out value to set the feed-rate override? I'm really struggling to find the right information in the linuxcnc documentation.

Something like this?