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Orange Pi 5 Plus has better performance than Raspberry Pi 5, but its ecosystem is not as good as Raspberry Pi. Ethercat is easy to install. You can check it out forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/48079-can...-to-run-lcnc?start=0

Hello,

Please excuse my crashing into this thread. I've found it very useful so far and managed to set up 6 out of 7 parts of my 30-year-old Gravograph Unica that I'm trying to convert to LinuxCNC running on a Raspberry Pi with a Mesa 7C80.

What's working fine so far are the 3 steppers and corresponding home switches X, Y & Z.

But: The spindle won't turn on.
I'd like to control it via PWM and as far as I can tell there should be PWM output on pin 2 of TB5 of the 7C80.
There's no useable output there, and I'm not sure where to search and what to do next ...

If there's any chance you could have a look at my .hal and .ini files, that would be very much appreciated
I also included the output of the terminal from where LinuxCNC was launched, and the output of "halcmd show signal spin".
Voltage between SINDLE+ and SPINDLE- seems to be just noise or in the mV-Magnitude.

Thank you for reading and best regards,
Erik
captain-panda

 
 
 
 

Wow this is shaping out to be quite tricky! There is probably no useful info in this message, but I found that writing stuff down sometimes reveals a sensible next step in an otherwise blurry mess of ethercat acronyms

By rearranging the PDOs in the manufacturer supplied TwinCAT 2 project slightly I can get the drive to OP state and I can even read cyclic PDO data from it, such as statusword, velocity and position. But the other direction master-> drive PDO transmission is not received no matter what I try.
 

• I have verified equal 1ms cycle time settings in the servo drive config software, in the TwinCAT 2 distributed clock settings, in the TwinCAT 2 axis and PLC
• Even if this was a distributed clock configuration or jitter issue, Metronix ARS 2310 FS claims to be able to synchronize with raw Ethercat frames on the network if no DC is available
• I am seeing 1 (one) successful master->drive PDO transmission per preop->op state transition, where I believe TwinCAT also transfers a lot of SDO settings

It's worse on LinuxCNC, here I don't even receive any PDO data from the drive. But here too the drive reaches OP state and SDO transmissions via ethercat download or ethercat upload work and are evaluated seemingly correctly by Metronix.
 

I am still not quite sure how important the SII EEPROM data is. If I use siitool -m to create an eeprom image from the manufacturer supplied EDS xml profile with PDO mappings, any ethercat sii_write attempts are seemingly dismissed, afterwards the drive is listed only with some IDs in ethercat slaves. An image created without PDO mappings, but only with sync managers and human readable manufacturer strings etc can be written successfully and is listed as such in ethercat slaves even after power cycles.
 

With the diagnostics in my Chinese servo drives I can verify that Linux-dominated Ethercat has the correct sync cycle time of 1ms configured. I've never seen any errors from them, but there does seem to be a non-zero number of SM2 lost times and Sync lost times, maybe 1 per second? Is that normal or could that be a problem for a fastidious German servo drive?
 

The laptop on which I am currently running TwinCAT and the Raspberry Pi on which I am running the Linux Ethercat master are both not equipped with especially reputable Intel NICs ... could that be a fundamental problem? Should I look for some normal office PC for a test run?

read the comments on the downloads page. menu-config should do it for you.

In my case, it would be ethernet, I need the configuration area for the IP/Gateway address, that way, I can study the connection with ethernet cards.

cncmiljc wrote:

Could anyone help, I made the image for the pi4 following the image on the official page, but it doesn't have the area for ethernet configuration, how can I solve this problem?

The current 2.9.2 image  needs updating to 2.9.3 but we no longer install Ethercat repositories for the Raspberry pi.
I am not sure if the pi is supported in their repos for Debian 12 at all
Also I doubt that a linuxcnc-ethercat driver is built for the pi either
Right now your option is to build from source
I have raised an issue with Ethercat to explore a solution for this.

 

Could anyone help, I made the image for the pi4 following the image on the official page, but it doesn't have the area for ethernet configuration, how can I solve this problem?

Dear All,

Figured it out with extended reading - thanks for this great forum! - and a bit of creative try-and-error.
All 3 axes are set up and calibrated, homing works like a charm
Next and last open issue is the spindle - but I don't expect much difficulty with that. Otherwise there'll be another post here ...

ORIGINAL POST:
I've started a project to convert a 30-year-old engraving machine (Gravograph UNICA) to LinuxCNC running on a Raspberry PI 4 with a MESA 7C80. I have several Gravograph machines of various sizes available and am looking to roll out my conversion to most of them, if it works out as planned. These machines may be old, but as such they're solid and reliable. Also they are simple as there's just one stepper and one limit switch per axis and the spindle motor to control. The main reason for conversion is that the UNICA machine only runs on it's own Gravograph-unique operating system with a tiny monochrome CRT screen and propietary keyboard, with no communication port. The other, larger machines can communicate via serial port, but they also require Gravograph-only software ...

So far, I got the Raspberry PI, 7C80 and LinuxCNC up and running to the point that the x-axis stepper is operational by using linuxcnc.hal and linuxcnc.ini from this thread:
forum.linuxcnc.org/42-deutsch/52725-3-ac...esa-7c80-und-raspi-4

As far as I can tell, there's no wizard available (stepconf etc.) for configuring the MESA 7C80, so I need to work with the config files directly(?)

I modified linuxcnc.ini so that the stepper runs smoothly, and added three lines for the limit switch and homing. The stepper now starts running when I home the machine in LinuxCNC, and the program is apparently waiting for the limit switch to be triggered.
This is where I'm currently insecure and would like to ask for assistance:

• What terminals to connect the limit switch to at the 7C80?
• How to set it up as a NC contact (Switch opens when x-axis home position is reached)?
• How to set up homing to move the spindle towards home at first if the home switch is not triggered, and then move a short distance away and back to the final home position? 
  
  This is my current linuxcnc.ini:
   

  File Attachment:

  File Name: linuxcnc.ini
  File Size:4 KB
  
   
  Thank you for reading and thanks in advance for any answers!
  
  Best regards,
  Erik 
  captain-panda

meister wrote:

[code][code]EDIT: the config i build is only for testing, serial port will not work for LinuxCNC,
if you want to run LinuxCNC you need SPI (raspberry) or UDP (W5500 / UDP2SPI-Bridge)

[/code][/code]

Everything set-up & synthetizing-wise is working flawlessly. Said it before and I'll say it again; pretty EPIC work you've done for us   

I took onto your advice and stopped by my local gizmo shop to pick a W5500 Lite. Inserting a visual of my benchtop hardware set-up for inspiration and good luck! 

Thanks for reminding me of this. This is probably the issue I have with installing ethercat.

I'm not quite sure that everything works in the IDE, I haven't tested that for a long time.
but you can set the path there in the console like this:

then you can build the bitfile with:

EDIT: the config i build is only for testing, serial port will not work for LinuxCNC,
if you want to run LinuxCNC you need SPI (raspberry) or UDP (W5500 / UDP2SPI-Bridge)

you check id uefi or not as rodw explain here: forum.linuxcnc.org/ethercat/45336-etherc...-how-to-step-by-step ??

In my case need (not uefi but have that error because not all libs needed was installed) to install libethercat 2 time second one using synaptic. After it goes ....

A comment from a hobby non-trades user that finds 'stacking' or 'queuing' of MDI commands useful.

The hobby aspect often is a one-off with testing of individual cutting paths.
A few sequential paths might then give the result.
Then, copy/pastes within the MDI history allow the job to continue, and complete.

Sort of half-way between manual and cnc.

I am currently assessing what I should do on discovery that my new upgrade to LC2.9.2 on a Raspberry Pi 4B with AXIS does not allow MDI command stacking.
Gmoccapy is on the review list.

John.

At the point of "Test ethercat with linuxcnc " i am facing issues like "lFound file(REL): ./ethercat.hal
lcec: dlopen: libethercat.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"
But path my directory (path=$PATH:/usr/local/lib)

Yes I'm pretty sure they are analog input driven.

I'm planning on using the 7i97T with another card for more I/O. Was planning on using a 7i84, but I can't find them anywhere in stock. I need 20 sourcing outputs and 25 sinking inputs in total.

I could use some relais to convert the sinking outputs of the 7i84D to sourcing ones, but that seems unnecesary complicated. Other option would be the 7IA0 or the 7i77 but they are both 150€ more expensive.

For the controller I'll probably use a Raspberry PI 5.