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A couple things:

1. SSerial ports will only show up in LinuxCNC  if a SSerial remote is connected and detected.
(so you would not see 6 SSerial channels in LinuxCNC unless 6 devices were connected and detected)
Only the low level hardware listings like readhmid will show all possible channels

2. With pncconf for unsupported firmware, you can use the "Discover" option

3. Do the other functions like the encoders work on the 7I85?

4. I can verify that firmware + 7I85 later today

@mediocre_chloride

Thanks for the offer. If you`re up to it, I would be glad to try. Removing U3 and getting one of the exp ports to work would already be a huge help.

Is there a way to contact you? I didn`t find an option for personal messages.

Thanks for the information.
I`m sure there are some facilities, but it`s probably only worth it, if your device costs several hundred dollars or is not available anymore. Google told me that simple repairs start from 120$ and more. A bit too much, unless I can be 100% sure that it works afterwards.

I`d love to send it to Mesa directly, but last time i wanted to order two cards, the shipping calculator presented me with a 250$ shipping fee. Todayy it`s 98$, but import taxes and tolls allways work in mysterious ways according to my experiences, so I refuse.

If nothing works, I can still use it as a huge I/O expander with a second ethernet port. I saw a video on youtube, where they connected two ethernet cards to the host with an ethernet switch. I think i read that one should avoid switches in favor of a direct connection, but my Raspberry only has one ethernet port. I will probably try it, if i order a new 7i76eu.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Dear Linuxcnc forum members,
Since this is my first use of the forum, I would like to start with thanking the community in providing this very nice software and all the support around it. I am trying to equip an old (1980) MAHO 300 NC machine with complete new servo's, wiring and of course Linuxcnc. For this purpose I procured a MESA 7i76e card and several MESA sserial daughter cards (1x 7i85 2x7i84, 1x 7i87).

I installed Linuxcnc a while ago (version 2.9.4), established the ethernet connection with the 7i76e and installed 7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit file using the mesaflash tool on the 7i76e card itself. I think that this went well, see attached response on on a --readhmid command. I also made the 3 RJ45 connection cables which fit between the 7i85 and the individual sserial daughter cards (1x 7i84, 1x 7i84U & 1x 7i87). I also conclude that these cables are correctly assembled, as I do see the name of the daughter card and pins in a first machine configuration I made for the machine using pncconf. However.... They only work on one of the 7i85 sserial channels, namely the one identified in the MESA manual with Serial 4. None of the cards are visible when I plug these in in the other Serial connections on the 7i85. In pncconf I also encountered the "issue" (not sure if it is an issue or intended functionality...) that I could only select 7i76e_7i76x1_Dpl, where I had expected to also find something similar to the name of the 7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit file. When I run --serial in mesaflash I also see that there is only 1 sserial  channel available, namely channel 6 (see second attachment). This while I had expected to find 6 channels in total (1 on the 7i76e and 5 on the mesa 7i85). During my own attempts to solve this I also changed the hal file line which refers to hm2_eth  to:loadrt hm2_eth board_ip="10.10.10.10" config="num_encoders=5 num_pwmgens=0 num_stepgens=5 sserial_port_0=00000000"Unfortunately this still doesn't allow me to connect a second sserial daughter card to any of the other sserial positions on the 7i85 other than Serial 4. Since I am stuck on this already for a while I decided to write this post in the hope that somebody is willing to help me out with some advice on how to proceed. Some specific questions:-What do need to do on the linuxcnc PC to correctly install the bit-file “7i76e_7i76x1_7i851D.bit”? I do see some info on this topic on: www.linuxcnc.org/docs/html/drivers/hostmot2.html but I lack experience to perform the right steps to do this install using the Synaptic Package Manager. I only have the zip file from MESA with the *.bin and *.bit files in them but don’t see this in the Synaptic Package Manager.
I also browsed to the "-Do I need to occupy the sserial on the 7i76e before I can put daughter cards on the sserial on the 7i85?
Many thanks in advance for your support.

Is simply improving heat dissipation enough, or are there other solutions? The N100 is too expensive.

The Baytrail J1800-J1900's are a mess. Maybe its been fixed, but incorrect power management caused them to report they were overheating and shut down, I had a couple that went in the bin.

I think it expects a youtube video

look latency test
 today morning is ok, no problem ,after 1h30 alarm and stop , what is it???????


 

Title: Qt eglfs vs Xorg/glamor on Intel J1900 — 1 kHz EtherCAT jitter (not LinuxCNC, GPU/X data point)

Not a LinuxCNC install. Posting because this forum already tracks iGPU/X vs servo-thread latency, and we have before/after numbers on one box.

Hardware: Intel Celeron J1900 (Bay Trail HD 8086:0f31), Debian 13 PREEMPT_RT 6.12, IgH EtherCAT master, 1 kHz, two axes. HMI is a fullscreen Qt Quick app on the same machine. Isolated CPU3 for the RT loop.

Same load, same kernel.

Xorg + glamor + x11vnc:
- P99 |jitter| about 52 us (after removing a measurement bias)
- worst -171 / +58 us
- many outliers; 60-90 points >=80 us per 5 s capture

Qt eglfs / eglfs_kms (no LightDM, no X, no VNC), QT_QPA_EGLFS_NO_LIBINPUT=1:
- P99 |jitter| 14 us
- worst -38 / +45 us
- 0 points >=50 us in ~35k cycles

A separate bug was measuring jitter mid-axis instead of wake-to-wake; that only moved the mean onto 0 us. The spike cleanup is the display path: X/glamor/x11vnc fighting i915 while the RT thread is on the sibling core.

We are not recommending this on Elkhart Lake (J6412/J6413). There, glamor already gave 100-300 us spikes; eglfs would own the GPU even harder.

Happy to hear if anyone running a Qt or other GL HMI beside a 1 ms servo thread has compared eglfs/KMS to a compositing X session.

No worries, for now, but just imagine how that might end up later in the process when we start talking wiring.

That might have been auto correct i swear i wrote servo, im used to 3d printers so maybe i mixed up by habbit. But yes they are servo motors not stepper motors, the servos motors still need a drive board tho, and sorry for the confusion ill double check the spelling

Bunchi wrote:

...maybe im just looking the wrong places tho

No, not the wrong places, probably, but definitely for the wrong thing, 3 times we mentioned those are servo motors and drives, yet you insist on mentioning steppers.

Trying to embed video:

i.imgur.com/mOQMjpb.mp4

i.imgur.com/mOQMjpb.mp4

Some observations:

- When attempting to edit the first post, the editor shows the content only up to the first image. Everything else is gone in the editor. Including in "source" mode. Not sure if the editor has some kind of limit in lines or content. 

- Have not found how to embed videos from imgur. The video button in the editor asks for url, size, height, width, provider (from a fixed list in a drop-down menu), and id. However, the resulting source only showstags, regardless of what is entered. Unclear if something is done in the background.

- When clicking to edit these posts, all of the text shows in blue like a url. Using "source" mode in editor shows the closing url taghas been moved from the end of the first url/link to the end of all text. This happens repeatedly even if in source mode I remove that closing url tag and put it back where it should be and save the post.

This is a test post to duplicate another of my posts in another thread on the forum and troubleshoot why my video links did not work. I may make several edits or reply posts. This thread can be removed by mods eventually. Thanks for having a testing area. And now, on with the test:

==========

Lukasz from Proma-Elektronika kindly sent us a unit to test, and we are quite happy with how it performs on our fiber laser machine.





The height sensor is used to automatically set and/or maintain a fixed nozzle-to-material distance which has been determined appropriate according to the focal point of the laser beam, i.e. "autofocus".

Autofocus is enabled in the following clips, and the readout from the device shows it is maintaining the set height closely, including during/after indexing. The drilling speed was slowed down to make it easier to observe.

The C2V Laser Sense has not had issues with noise from operation or the sparks generated, which eventually became a problem with an optical height sensor used previously with this machine.

Drilling holes:

i.imgur.com/mOQMjpb.mp4
i.imgur.com/CB8KpLx.mp4

Entry holes:


Exit holes:


Straight cuts. Note the visible autofocusing at the very beginning:

i.imgur.com/YGVQZon.mp4

Result:




The testing we did is so far largely qualitative but we can say it comfortably achieves its specified 10 um (0.01mm) resolution, which is important to us. At some point it would also be good to validate the stated sampling frequency (3.65 kHz) and response time (< 2 ms).

Aside from performance, one standout feature of this unit is the information feedback right on the unit. The LED and built-in display are tremendously helpful, both during calibration, and during operation. Really a very useful feature!

Setup was quite simple and the documentation of the device function, modes, wiring diagrams, and calibration routines were helpful. A cat6a cable (shielded, twisted pairs) was perfect for making the data/power cable.

For integrating the C2V Laser Sense to our existing machine using an Aerotech A3200 controller, it was straightforward to just use the analog output from the device. It would be great to see others configure this device with LinuxCNC. Given the many modes of operation offered, it should be possible to get it set up with quite a variety of hardware.

Since precision is our priority, we went with Mode 0 which has a non-linear (exponential decay) relationship between voltage and distance.

Good grounding of the chassis was important to getting good calibration results, and luckily the calibration process is easy. Fast calibration for the reference position is just a button press. The precision calibration requires programming a small routine to get the motion speed and distance required.

The best part is the colors of the LED indicator make it easy to see when calibration should begin, when it is in progress, and most importantly, whether it has failed or completed successfully. And the built-in display even shows the calibration curve; a very nice touch!

In one instance, upon powering up the machine, the device's reading was "frozen" at a fixed voltage regardless of distance, or even touching the nozzle tip. We never figured out what the cause was. Re-initializing the system and checking the grounding did not help. But resetting the unit and recalibrating it resolved the matter. We were not able to reproduce this issue, so I guess chalk it up to machine gremlins.

It goes to show how useful the readout from the built-in display is, as that was the first and most obvious clue that something was not as expected.

Overall, very happy with the C2V Laser Sense. Thanks to Lukasz for sending us this unit. We'll be looking to purchase more units for future machines, hopefully running on LinuxCNC. If others have used this unit with LinuxCNC, please do post your results!

The photos you originally posted appear to be Servo Dynamics/Baldor LD series servo drives. Since they are analog ,they are easy to diagnose.