Setting up a joypad pendant.... not how, but what?

So I have been playing with setting up a Joypad pendant and have been getting along OK thanks to the WIKI and forum searching but I have a few questions about what to set up and why?
I can jog proportionately using the joysticks which is very cool.

I saw the article on setting up incremental jog which would also be handy BUT as implemented it uses the same analog sticks. I have a secondary direction pad on my joypad, maybe I should set that up as incremental jog? That way continuous and step feeds are separated?

It would seem nice to always have incremental jog ready to go, maybe with the addition of a safety button? Would I be better off saving the DPad buttons for discrete buttons to use later?

I guess the crux of the inquiry is what a pendant should have, or at least what should a joypad pendant have for a small size milling machine to be most effective.

I attached a pic of the joypad in question; I mostly got it because of the extra buttons on the face.

I was thinking of using analogs for continuous, triggers 1-3 for continuous feeds and D-pad as X-Y with 5-6 for Z and trigger 4 as safety for incremental. That leaves 1-4 unused and available.

Ohh yeah, one other question and this one may be more technical…. Is there any way to access the mode/clear/turbo buttons if they aren’t listed in the hal config/pins/input listing for the joystick?

I guess the crux of the inquiry is what a pendant should have, or at least what should a joypad pendant have for a small size milling machine to be most effective.

Really just depends on what type of work you are doing and how you go about doing the work. Whatever is comfortable for you.

Rick G

The next best thing would be to be able to move 0.001" with each button press.

Yep, and to be safe I like to use a safety button so that you do not accidentally jog the machine when you do not want to (drop the joypad, place a book on it, etc.)
Also if you use the joypad and want to move X you want to be sure Y does not also move.
I set up 3 incremental move sizes, .001, .005 and .010, so to do an incremental jog select the size of the move with one button and hold it and then use the joystick to make the move.
So to move X .001 hold button one then move the X stick all the way. You can set a high threshold on the joysticks to prevent a slight movement in the Y direction when moving X to cause Y to also move.

Rick G

I have incremental and continuous jog set up now, as per the WIKI pages. After "Playing around with it" some I am comfortable that I can increment accurately and also control the continuous jog well enough for gross positioning. Feedback for which mode I’m in is next… I’m studying the examples and trying to piece together enough to figure it out.

It’s very fun to control “Real motors’ with a joypad, LOL.

I do have one slight…. Well, unexpected behavior. I’m not sure it’s a “Problem” per-se, but on the continuous jog (With or without incremental mode… as implemented on this Wiki page: wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Simple_Remote_Pendant ) when you hit button one you get speed 1, button 2, speed 2 and button 3, speed 3. So far, as expected… BUT, when you hit button 1 AND button 2, you get speed 3.

This is actually kind of handy since you can slow-jog at speed 1 and “Turbo” it by hitting the speed 2 button. I’m not sure it’s intended behavior though and it’s not documented in the WIKI. It might not be a bad mode of operation though as it might save a button for something else and it is pretty intuitive.

Slowly the controller of my dreams (Until I can afford a “real” pendant, LOL) is coming together. Now to figure out what to use the 10 remaining buttons on the front face for since the D-pad (4) and 1-6 aren’t being used yet, LOL.

Glad you are making progress.
I added a beep to let me know if the machine was in incremental or proportional mode. Seems to me you could use a audio player for this. Or add a panel indicator.
The point is you REALLY want to make sure you are in incremental mode when you think you are.

As I mainly use the joypad to position the machine to "touch off" the next buttons I added were the touch off buttons.
On a large machine it is easier for me to carry the pendant to the work area, jog in place then touch off than keep going back to the keyboard.

Again depending on how you work some other candidates might be...
A go home button.
An E stop button.
Spindle and feed overrides.
Run stop pause resume buttons
Toggle coolant, spindle, etc.

Rick G

I finally got the panel indicator to work last time I was digging around the HAL files, yay! So, I have a nice big LED on the panel to tell me if I am in incremental mode.

I'm still not super clear on syntax and am struggling a bit with exactly where things are "created" in the HAL but I am making some progress. I'm at the "I can't write it from scratch but I can probably hack it together" point, LOL.

Thanks all for your help!

I want to setup a pendant/mpg for lathe and for i/o i have a mesa card (72 gpio).
I have a mpg 100ppr (AA' BB') an arcade joystick (4 positions www.ebay.com/itm/Red-8-Way-Joystick-Figh...Gaming-/230822840629 ) a lot of arcade buttons estop button and a usb 4 positions 12 buttons joystick/gamepad controller ( www.ebay.com/itm/Zero-Delay-Arcade-USB-E...uttons-/171040534955 ) .
I want to use the mpg for small acurate movements/feed/spindle override the joystick for rapid jog and buttons for misc functions.

Can i connect joystick and buttons to usb controller and connect only mpg to mesa card ?
Can i connect all to usb controller including mpg ?
Or it would be better to use 8 to 3 bit encoder (SN74HC148) and connect all to mesa card like here
www.anderswallin.net/2006/11/jogging-emc2/
?

Also can i connect an arduino to mesa card with real time serial connection or with usb to use arduinos i/o as general gpio for linuxcnc ?

What special functions will be good to have a pendant for a lathe except common (jog/feed-spindle override/coolant/spindle cw-ccw-stop / cycle start-stop-pause) ?

Wow, lots of questions there.....

Yes, I believe you can use the usb adapter with the joystick and buttons for input. It either simulates a keyboard, or it simulates a joystick most likely. Either one should be workable by mapping keys or inputs.

As to the MPG... I don't know because I don't have one. (But n\ow you have me thinking since I do happen to have a big 'ole trackball XArcade USB device...) An arcade style controller could be interesting.

The rest may have to go to someone more experienced... I'm still a newb, LOL.

Speaking of being a newb... the above are my newb guesses and opinions and should not be confused with facts, LOL.