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Despite taking apart the thc controller and examining the guts, I don't know how the thing works.
There's no encoder(i originally thought there was but it's actually a brake) and I wouldn't know how to identify a potentiometer feedback.
It would touch off on the top when turned on and then probe with either ohmic or current sense before cutting.
I assume it had some way of knowing it's height, but maybe I'm giving them too much credit.
Maybe I ought to pop that brake off and see if an encoder would fit. Tone rings, hall sensors, I'm all over the place.

As much as I am enjoying my journey down this rabbit hole, I don't wanna drag you down with me.
Trying to see things from your perspective, I can imagine thinking, "Why doesn't this guy just do what everyone else does, you know, the stuff that works?"
Sometimes I get lost in the details and forget what I'm even trying to accomplish.


 

In fact, Linux has been really close to merging PREEMPT_RT into mainline for years, and most of it has been mainlined during this time. The patchset size decreased significantly as parts of it were accepted, so there has been less patching with every new release. If it decreases to 0 in 6.12, that's great! The kernel will still need to be configured to enable PREEMPT_RT and built, but that's not a problem.

2020: www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-PREEMPT_RT-Soon
2022: www.phoronix.com/news/520-Maybe-Real-Time-PREEMPT_RT

Raspberry Pi Imager is a user-friendly software by Raspberry Pi Foundation for writing an operating system image to an SD card of Raspberry Pi or eMMC of a Compute Module. The interface includes a step where an image can be selected, and the selection includes third party operating systems as well. Getting LinuxCNC included in this list might help to raise awareness of the fact that LinuxCNC can run on RPi and of the project in general. Also, this can be the preferred and the easiest way of installing the OS for users who are not comfortable using the command line.

To submit LinuxCNC for inclusion, we need to host ready to use RPi images, 40x40 pixel icon and some JSON ( example submission ). When it's all accessible with direct links, someone should fill the form , and wait for approval.

So one of the first questions that seems to crop up is latency/jitter and general performance of the RPI5 vs PC hardware and older RPI models.
 
I don't have an old pc available but i do have a RPI 4b and a PRI 5, both with 8gb of ram. and i can test the RPI 5 with and without the PCIE NVME hat to see if that makes any meaningful difference.
For fun i might try a usb bootable image for the laptop i used for Mach4 and Ethernet Smooth Stepper.

All will be tested with Linux CNC 2.9.2, SD card tests are done with a fresh image from the RPI Imager using the same sd card. 

For the NVME test  i have been playing with that install(2.9.2) for a few days (and the jitter looks worse for it I think).

All tests done with 10x glx gears running and Linux CNC guide open in firefox and scrolled around to get some idea of loaded up performance. 

All RPI tests will be also using the same keyboard, mouse and HDMI + USB touch screen 

As a side note the NVME drive seems to make the PI5 feel more responsive and quicker to bootup. 

The performance of the PI4 with a desktop is new to me as i have only used it headless to run a 3d printer with klipper.  

Hi again.

I spent quite a bit of time on this in the past week and I believe I narrowed down the problem. My worry is that I don't know if it can even be solved, haha.

Firstly, I dug deeper into what rodw suggested with making sure I had a dedicated NIC to EtherCAT. Turns out the generic EC driver doesn't reserve one for itself. I found out there is an igb driver in the 6.1 kernel, which was great. I had to remove everything EC related and rebuild it from source, however, since the configure tool needed the --enable-igb option passed to it for igb support. You can't do that when you install from repositories AFAIK. Either way, now the NIC doesn't even show up under "ip a" anymore. EtherCAT has it completely reserved for itself, which is great.

Now, the real culprit. As I mentioned before, I saw some blink and you'll miss them spikes in the latency. After a lot of reading, I came to the conclusion it is related to Intel SMI (System Management Interrupt) . Diving into some more old documentation, I saw it mentioned as a culprit . However, these posts seem to be very very old at this point. The tool suggested at the end of that wiki article did not help me, as it only reports that "No SMI-enabled chipset found".

This cannot be the case, though, as in my BIOS there is clearly a setting called "Global SMI Lock." Additionally, I found this utility called BITS. It provides exactly what I need - an SMI latency test. The PC failed said test miserably, with 300μ being reported. That is, by the way, the exact size of the spike the LinuxCNC Latency Test reported. I am attaching a photo of the test result. I am assuming the tool from the wiki article is simply very old and does not support the onboard PC's chipset (the CPU of which is an Intel Celeron N2930). The MSR 0x34 register as reported by turbostat is also 1.17, which I am not sure how to interpret exactly, but seeing as it is well over 0, it must not be good.

I will spend the day trying to somehow disable SMI and testing the machine with a different PC that I know passes the BITS SMI test.

Does anyone have any idea on how to go about disabling SMI? I believe the only option in my BIOS is this Global SMI Lock I mentioned which didn't seem to do much. On some old forums I saw people mentioning you need to mod and reflash your BIOS. I'd like to leave that as a last resort as doing it improperly will essentially deep fry the motherboard.

Hey guys,Still getting error messages for pierce height exceding z axis max limit.It's weird because it went away after deleting the .var file... But now I tried the same process and I still have the error. The only way I can get it to work is to disable ohmic probing.Also my pendant jog speed is really slow, maybe 100mm per minute. I have been looking in pendant.hal but I can't work out how to change it. It looks a bit different to the code that I find on the forums.
 

Super, dass du es gefunden hast.

Anhand deines Scopebildes erkennt man auch, dass da irgendwas ab einer Geschwindigkeit X begrenzt. EMV würde sich der Schleppfehler nicht so abruppt erhöhen, sondern sich so "hinzuppeln"...

Das meinte ich aber auch mit den Absolutwerten. Wenn man das Feedback der GMS wieder rausnimmt und vom stepgen reinholt und dann GMS mit stepgen vergleicht.

Julian

Thanks Rod.

When I first tried using this H2+ LCNC was in the middle of the python2/3 fiasco and I was struggling between Deb 10/11 and the r8125 drivers.

I'll try Deb 12 again, although I've tried it about a dozen times in the past 4 days.

can you please post your entire .ini file.

Yes, this script won't break anything. Its a variant of the script I use in some of the installers that etherlabmaster helped me with.
I think the problem is the security key they use has a 2 year life then it expires. This script simply removes the file causing the key error, gets the key and creates the required apt file. Then 
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

will correctly update your system

Sometimes the path needs modifying in the hal file where you load the ethercat driver. You need to share the errors printed in the console when you start linuxcnc from the command line for anybody to help

I have a H2+ and its been running happilly with Debian 10 for  a long time. NIC support was added in kernel 5.9 and  Debian 10 came with kernel 5.10 which was fine. Wifi is always problematic and I  heve built  the driver for a number of Wifi dongles. It can take a bit of Sleuthing to find what WiFI chip your dongle uses, then some googling to find some source code to  compile.

Before Deb 10, you had to download the source from Realtek for the NIC. I have done that too.
Today with Debian 12  the R8125-dkms driver should fix any issues as it is being built from source too. But I have not tried it.
So in summary, I think I would try Debian 12, install the DKMS driver and apply the cpu affinity script I mention in my help file  which is on this forum and be prepared to build a Wifi driver. However I have yet to need to build a wifi driver on Debian 12.

VTK is now supported in the debian packages and one of the QTPYVCP devs I know has got it going recently on a Pi5 with the image on the downloads page (Use Balena Etcher to burn it)

 

What is the card address and what does the command

ip a

report?

You can boot the fallback configuration by setting both IP address jumpers UP
(the will also set the card IP address to 192.168.1.121)
 

I flashed 7i95t_5abodd.bin, it succeeded. Then I hit reload, and now the card can't be found. I rebooted the card and restarted MesaCT, still can't find the board. Jumpers still in the same location, NIC settings the same. No red leds.

What to do now?

Cheapest way:
-an older PC with parallel port
-a BOB with spindle control
-3 of cheap TB6600 drives
total under 100$
-
Medium way
-a decent PC
-Mesa 7i96S
-3 of whatever drives they can afford, i would still use the TB6600
total under 300$
-
Best way
-a decent PC
-Mesa 7i96S
-LAM Technologies drives
-Bigger power supply
total from 500$ and up
-
The old drives can probably be reused, but might not be worth the time.
The old control most probably will not work with LinuxCNC or any modern control, either way serial is really, really slow.
Check the flat cable connector that goes to the drive board, how many pins does it have? I tried to count from the picture but ended up with over 30, so probably my eyes are fuzzy...