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mrcrankyface wrote:

By chance I noticed that mousing over the wifi symbol in the taskbar shows some more info. This shows me that wlan0 is connected to our home wifi whilst eth0 is "Configured 169.254.201.82/16" which also seems wrong. It should show 10.10.10.10?
I did not manage to find anywhere I could manually set this(like the TCP/IP settings on Windows)

 

The cause of the mess is that the network is not configured correctly.
I suspect that the IP in eth0 is still set to DHCP. And no, if your 7i96 is called 10.10.10.10, your computer must have a different IP.  Maybe 10.10.10.1.
You can set it by right-clicking on the network symbol in the settings. Or you can look here for relevant posts:
forum.linuxcnc.org/forum/search
as a search term perhaps interfaces. There you will find a lot to adjust your settings.

Hello!

By issue I mean I'm most likely the problem and am just not seeing what's wrong.
First time ever using Linux and LinuxCNC so could be really obvious things, maybe we'll find out.

First issue:
Pncconf won't let me change a stepgen to pwmgen which I need to control my VFD.
I have this quote I've saved from somewhere, probably from this forum.=10.0pt"To load 7i96d_1pwm.bit you would need to fetch the 7i96.zip archive from Mesa,
extract the 7i96d_1pwm.bit bitfile and run these commands:
mesaflash --device 7i96 --addr [the cards current ip address] --write 7i96d_1pwm.bit
mesaflash --device 7i96 --addr [the cards current ip address] –reload" I'm guessing that's just something I write into the terminal thing? I'm so used to Windows so this is abit out of my depth.

Second problem:
In the configurator, when testing the axises/motors, nothing moves. I click enable and run but nothing happens. Do I need to do something more?

Third problem:
Possibly the cause of my second problem, who knows.
After finishing the pncconf I tried starting LinuxCNC but it refuses. This is the error message it throws:

I'm guessing the main issue here is the "could not retrieve hardware address ..."
I'm fairly sure I've configured the Mesa card to respond to 10.10.10.10 but seems it's not working? I tried "ping 10.10.10.10" in the terminal but nothing happens for maybe 20 seconds after which I got "From 46.59.119.34 icmp_seq=14 Packet filtered" which seems like a weird response to a ping?

By chance I noticed that mousing over the wifi symbol in the taskbar shows some more info. This shows me that wlan0 is connected to our home wifi whilst eth0 is "Configured 169.254.201.82/16" which also seems wrong. It should show 10.10.10.10?
I did not manage to find anywhere I could manually set this(like the TCP/IP settings on Windows)

This is the Mesa card, as far as I can tell, the jumpers next to the "Power in" at the bottom right should be set to 10.10.10.10.


Any guidance on this would be much appreciated!

Hi, Rodw,

Used your install guide and this thread to get my Raspberry Pi 4 router mill up and running. Thanks for the great help!

Found a thread on install troubles - got WiFi working. Jitter about doubled to 130590 on servo. Still get the locale error in pncconf after a reboot.

Also, pncconf wizard shows errors - something about unsupported locale setting - happens right after setting up the Mesa board at the X Motor screen.

Hi - I tried installing LinuxCNC according to this thread - it's up and running as Linux, good latency. Problem is - I cannot get WiFi working. raspi-config seems to be missing? Any ideas?

Hi,
I've been pouring over a bunch of threads here on Mesa boards and I'm pretty sure that I want to upgrade my system to use one, but I'm still quite confused about the best one to choose and the overall process of getting it hooked up and any other hardware required.  I'm sure this info is already out there somewhere but I'm having a really hard time piecing it all together.

I have been running LinuxCNC on a dedicated desktop PC using a parallel port interface to control my CNC lathe.  I've had some issues with latency and timing, particularly with threading operations.  I'd like to upgrade my setup to use a Mesa board for (hopefully) better performance and also to get away from using the parallel port.  I think an ideal solution would be to use a Raspberry Pi with the Mesa board so that I don't need to tie up a full PC.  I've read about varying results of this approach on this forum.  Mesa makes the 7c81 board (seems to be out of stock currently) specifically to interface with the GPIO of the RPI or I could get one of the ethernet boards, but some users complain about timing issues with ethernet on the RPI.  An ethernet board also seems nice if I decide to use it with a PC instead of an RPI.  Which boards have people had success with when controlling with an RPI?

My current setup (using the PC with parallel ports) can control 3 open loop steppers, has 6 limit switches, an encoder for the spindle and an MPG with a quadrature encoder, and about 5 other buttons/knobs for input.  So I'd like to get a Mesa board that can handle all of those outputs and inputs.  In the future, I'd also be curious about using some glass scales on the X and Z axes of the lathe to provide feedback, but maybe that's another topic.

Are there any self-contained guides or tutorials on getting the mesa board setup with LinuxCNC?  Will I need to change the firmware on the FPGA to configure it?  Do I even need to run a real-time OS if the FPGA is controlling all the fast timing? 

I really appreciate all help and suggestions!
Carson

Sound like fun

You might be able to retain RS422 control, if you know the format of the datagrams.
It's certainly worth a try, just using a USB to RS422 converter and a terminal emulator program.

How long is a datagram? Bear in mind that the most practical form of a LinuxCNC HAL driver would simply send a new position command every 1mS. So the data packet needs to be short enough to be sent in that time at 9600b.

Is there any particular reason that you are looking at the 7i90? Are you looking to control via the parallel port? Or is the plan SPI control with a Raspberry Pi or similar?

If you feel that RS422 control is the way forward, then the HD50 cards (like the 7i90) are the right choice as ypu would want to be using the 7i44 serial interface rather than the 7i74 one. This is because the 7i74 only has one RS422-capable channel.

Actually, if the drives are daisy-chained, 1 channel might be enough.

I think that step 1 is to check if the drives can be reconfigured for step/dir, quadrature or +/-10V drive. All three are well-supported by LinuxCNC.

Maybe take a look here for a driver which uses the Mesa UARTs for serial control: github.com/LinuxCNC/linuxcnc/blob/2.9/sr...sa_pktgyro_test.comp though that particualar driver is recieve-only.
The point is that it is probably easily done with a custom HAL component:
linuxcnc.org/docs/stable/html/hal/comp.html

Thank you for your response,
I'm running linuxcnc on a raspberry PI 4, with a 7i92 + 7i73.
but I really don't understand what you mean, could you explain?

Thank's for the answer.
I have used linuxcnx → by_interface→parport →stepper →stepper_mm
I have modified the file  standard_pinout.hal with
# standard pinout config file for 3-axis steppers
# using a parport for I/O
#
# first load the parport driver
#loadrt hal_parport cfg="0x0378"
# Pour les GPIO
#loadrt hal_pi_gpio dir=67108751 exclude=0
loadrt hal_pi_gpio dir=35390224 exclude=31718639

# next connect the parport functions to threads
# read inputs first
#addf parport.0.read base-thread 1
# Je fais la même chose pour les GPIO
addf hal_pi_gpio.read base-thread

# write outputs last
#addf parport.0.write base-thread -1
addf hal_pi_gpio.write base-thread
#
# finally connect physical pins to the signals
#net Xstep => parport.0.pin-03-out
#net Xdir  => parport.0.pin-02-out
#net Ystep => parport.0.pin-05-out
#net Ydir  => parport.0.pin-04-out
#net Zstep => parport.0.pin-07-out
#net Zdir  => parport.0.pin-06-out

net Xstep           => hal_pi_gpio.pin-23-out
net Xdir            => hal_pi_gpio.pin-19-out
net Ystep           => hal_pi_gpio.pin-13-out
net Ydir            => hal_pi_gpio.pin-15-out
net Zstep           => hal_pi_gpio.pin-38-out
net Zdir            => hal_pi_gpio.pin-40-out

# create a signal for the estop loopback
# ça ne change pas
net estop-loop iocontrol.0.user-enable-out iocontrol.0.emc-enable-in

It seams to be easy to understand, except the first line
loadrt hal_pi_gpio dir=35390224 exclude=31718639

for this i used
forum.linuxcnc.org/18-computer/43353-rpi...tion?start=10#226664
to load rpi-gpio_1.0_arm64.deb

rpi--gpio -> the pins i used -> Get HAl -> loadrt hal_pi_gpio dir=35390224 exclude=31718639

That's all. Everything works as I need.
Thank's again.

For information, with a fresh install, I have always latency warnings. With halrun or linuxcnc
Unexpected realtime delay on task 0 with period 50000
I have tried to find something. It always appear at the very beginning of a task, never again...

Cordially

 

Hi Team, thanks to all who do the great work on this, especially Rodw and Cornholio in this instance, I'm a watcher but not regular contributor. Been using MACH3 for a many years on a 3 axis router at home and just completed a 15 month contract running vertical mills Doosan DNM400/650/700 with Fanuc controllers, so that was super helpful for me to up-skill on machining and cnc control operation. I have ordered a Pi5 and already have an ethernet MESA board so its time now for me to move on from MACH3. As soon as my Pi5 arrives I'll start doing some bench tests. Thanks, really stoked to see a Pi powerful enough and people seem confident in it.  What ever I learn I'll do my best to share in the group. Cheers
, Richard

QTVCP don't have debs for the pi in their repository so it was a dead end there.
Ethercat have pi debs in their repo and I built the linuxcnc ethercat driver for the pi and put it up on my repo. But neither have been tested.

Note we are not installing anything, just configuring apt so these companion prodcuct\s can be installed with sudo apt-get if the user wants to use them. Ethercat while open source has some pecuilar licensing requirements preventing linuxcnc from including it as we are a community, not a registered company..

(QTPYVCP is not available for the
pi).

Hey Rod, I saw this on the mail list.

Do you mean its not available on bookworm, or not available in general?

Yay! 2.9.1 is officially released. Grab your Bookworm  .IMG for the rpi from here
linuxcnc.org/iso/linuxcnc-2.9.1-bookworm-rpi4.img.xz

I will update the download URL in the first post once I gather the strength to tackle the forum editor!

Also note that Linuxcnc 2.9.1 is now in Debian Unstable which means in about 5 days, it will be in Debian 13 (Trixie)
Very cool!

Yes to bluepill, no to usb. You need to use a raspberry pi SPI