Gscreen - a GTK / Glade / Python based screen

Chris,

Great progress!!

After using it on the mill a bit I have some comments --
1. The number buttons on the spindle preset popup are too small to use on our touchscreen, unless we click with the trackball. The same is true of the popup keyboard and touchoff popup. Could these buttons be made larger? Also, it doesn't show the value entered as the buttons are pressed. The value only shows up when the entry field is clicked. On the mill I noticed the value is quite slow to update after pressing a couple of number buttons.
2. If the spindle was started, then the speed adjusted, then stopped. Next time it is started, could it use the same speed as when it was last stopped in the current session? Would help for starting/stopping when using an edge finder when touching off the work.
3. We have a hardware "Start Cycle" pushbutton wired to a hal pin. If I enter an MDI command into Gscreen, could this hal input be used to execute the MDI command? This is not a big deal, but we're used to it since touchy does this.
4. Our gscreen.ini file specifies the columns to be used by the tool editor, like this:
TOOL_EDITOR = tooledit Z DIAM
This gives an error when pressing the Tooleditor button, as if it's trying to spawn the editor using "tooledit Z DIAM" as the program, not as the tooledit program with arguments.
5. Could the current spindle speed (selected with the +/- buttons) be shown somewhere near the display of actual speed? I know the red line shows it, but could the RPM number be shown as well?

This is really coming along Chris. Great work. Thanks a lot!!!

Karl

karlkec wrote: Chris,

Great progress!!

After using it on the mill a bit I have some comments --
1. The number buttons on the spindle preset popup are too small to use on our touchscreen, unless we click with the trackball. The same is true of the popup keyboard and touchoff popup. Could these buttons be made larger? Also, it doesn't show the value entered as the buttons are pressed. The value only shows up when the entry field is clicked. On the mill I noticed the value is quite slow to update after pressing a couple of number buttons.
2. If the spindle was started, then the speed adjusted, then stopped. Next time it is started, could it use the same speed as when it was last stopped in the current session? Would help for starting/stopping when using an edge finder when touching off the work.
3. We have a hardware "Start Cycle" pushbutton wired to a hal pin. If I enter an MDI command into Gscreen, could this hal input be used to execute the MDI command? This is not a big deal, but we're used to it since touchy does this.
4. Our gscreen.ini file specifies the columns to be used by the tool editor, like this:
TOOL_EDITOR = tooledit Z DIAM
This gives an error when pressing the Tooleditor button, as if it's trying to spawn the editor using "tooledit Z DIAM" as the program, not as the tooledit program with arguments.
5. Could the current spindle speed (selected with the +/- buttons) be shown somewhere near the display of actual speed? I know the red line shows it, but could the RPM number be shown as well?

This is really coming along Chris. Great work. Thanks a lot!!!

Karl

Karl thanks for the realworld feedback.

1) I can make the buttons larger on the number buttons - it may be a little while as its a separate widget to fix.
The pop up key board's size should be able to be change by dragging the corners - the keys should get larger too. It will remember this size the next time its popped up.
The numbers not updating or being slow is from the fact the computer is running out of time to do the userspace tasks, I find this on my test machine (1Mhz and onboard video). The debug text screen sometimes doesn't update either.
I just tested reducing the screen update from 50 milliseconds to 100 and the numbers updated properly and the rest of the screen seemed fine. I will make this change permanent.

2) I'll tell you the idea about spindle adjustments. The preset key (just under the start/stop key) is for that purpose. but as you found out using the +- keys
doesn't adjust this preset number. I could make it do that. I'm just not sure if that would be just as annoying when you want the preset to always be the same and just want to tweak with the +- keys. What do others think???

3) I'm sure we could do that. Do you want it just for MDI or do you want it for program cycle start too? I'll look into it

4) that does sound like a bug. I'll look into it nut just wondering why you don't use gscreen's tooleditor?

5) The current (feedback) spindle speed is displayed as a bar and as a digital number as long as you connect the HAL pin.
Is this what you want or do you want an digital readout of the commanded (requested) speed (which is what the red line represents)

Chris M

cmorley wrote: 1) I can make the buttons larger on the number buttons - it may be a little while as its a separate widget to fix.
The pop up key board's size should be able to be change by dragging the corners - the keys should get larger too. It will remember this size the next time its popped up.
The numbers not updating or being slow is from the fact the computer is running out of time to do the userspace tasks, I find this on my test machine (1Mhz and onboard video). The debug text screen sometimes doesn't update either.
I just tested reducing the screen update from 50 milliseconds to 100 and the numbers updated properly and the rest of the screen seemed fine. I will make this change permanent.

2) I'll tell you the idea about spindle adjustments. The preset key (just under the start/stop key) is for that purpose. but as you found out using the +- keys
doesn't adjust this preset number. I could make it do that. I'm just not sure if that would be just as annoying when you want the preset to always be the same and just want to tweak with the +- keys. What do others think???

3) I'm sure we could do that. Do you want it just for MDI or do you want it for program cycle start too? I'll look into it

4) that does sound like a bug. I'll look into it nut just wondering why you don't use gscreen's tooleditor?

5) The current (feedback) spindle speed is displayed as a bar and as a digital number as long as you connect the HAL pin.
Is this what you want or do you want an digital readout of the commanded (requested) speed (which is what the red line represents)

Chris M

3. It would be good if it could execute the MDI command and start the program. I haven't tried it, but can this be done by sending the button to halui.program.run?
4. I'm probably confused. I thought the entry in the ini file was required, to limit the number of tool editor columns to just the active ones. Not so?
5. I was thinking of a digital indication of the commanded speed. Partly my request for this is a bit odd, because we have a noisy spindle encoder and it's hard to know with any certainty what the commanded speed is from just the feedback speed. Let's see if others might want this too.

You can't run MDI with halui's run pin AFAIK

No If you have a very current Gscreen it automatically adjusts the columns to what in the INI file [TRAJECTORY] coordinates = X,Y,Z etc
there is also a unrelated command to load another tooleditor from the INI under [DISPLAY] TOOL_EDITOR = tooledit

5) Sounds to me that you need to filter your spindle feedback. The commanded speed is displayed in the active codes display when running a program. i might be able to have both speeds displayed in the bar display.....

Chris M

pushed some of the discussed changes.

No cycles start pin or offsets page yet... but system tab unlock code is there (the unlock code is 123)

Chris M

So I think i would like to build the offsets page as a HAL widget so others can use it in their own screens.
Just wondering what people think it should look like and include.

I could build a label widget that displays a single user selectable offset (just like the DRO widget)
Or could build a widget that displays all the current available offsets ( I would probably make one for all G5x offsets and one for G92 offsets)
and where does tool length fall in there? do we need a widget for that too?

The single label widget is the most flexible but of course and is the most work for the user to build in the GLADE file.
The all offsets widget is quick to use but only displays in a limited way.


Related to this is in Gscreen I still need to set up fixture offsets aka tooltable reference setting.
I'm thinking that having the 'fixture touchoff' button on either the offsets page or the tooltable page would make sense.
So that the origin offset button is on the setup page (as it is now) and then the tooltable reference button would be on a page you would need to be on anyways.

I don't like to use the same button for two different procedures (as AXIS does)

Opinions?