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Sometimes though the subnet mask does become important. I was allocated a 64 IP address range from my ISP way back when it was a dedicated dial up connection. Then the mask was important /26 or 255.255.255.192. But when setting up your own networks, just using 255 IP address are plenty and if you need seperate subnets, use the 192.168,  172.16 and 10 ranges or you can use 192.168.1.x, 192.168.2.x etc. You might need 2 seperate networks if you have a router with 2 WAN ports so you can have a failover connection or DMZ.

The default subnet mask for 10.n.n.n IP range is 8 or 255.0.0.0, and it will work with any subnet mask you set, be it 16 or 255.255.0.0 , or 24 or 255.255.255.0
I am sure that was not the issue.
Subnet is used to limit the the access to a certain IP range even when the same starting IP's are used, the thing nobody ever mentions here is:
Non routable IP ranges are :
10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 (10.0.0.0/8) so roughly 16 million IP addresses
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 (172.16.0.0/12) so roughly 1 million IP addresses
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255 (192.168.0.0/16) so roughly 65,000 addresses
Notice the default subnets, they can go up to 32 or 255.255.255.255 but that is useless as that will limit access to 0 (zero) IP's
You can set the subnet to 28 or 255.255.255.240 for the 10.n.n.n range, and still Mesa WILL work, as that will limit the IP block access to only 16 IP's, and since two of those are always reserved, you have 10.10.10.1 up to 10.10.10.14 that will work perfectly fine.
Etc etc, way to many variations there, but in general subnet is not very important ... until nothing works due to an error in it.

I have a couple of small parts that could/should really be done on a lathe, but my efforts at getting them right on my (manual) wood lathe have been... disappointing.

I heard recently of a technique I hadn't considered, using a 3-axis CNC machine:  Mount the stock to the collet of my  router spindle.  Mount a fixed cutter to the bed, oriented parallel to the X axis.  Adjust Y so that the cutter falls on the centerline of the spindle's (and stock's) spinning axis.  X will now control depth of cut, and Z will move the stock vertically lengthwise past the cutter.

First:  Does this technique have a name?  That might help my searching.

Second:  has anyone done this?  is it a worthwhile technique?

The parts in question are reproductions of antique hand crank handles.  Since they conveniently have a 1/4" bore down the middle, securing them to my 1/4" router collet will be relatively simple.  My bed is threaded-hole style, so pretty flexible in terms of mounting the cutting tool.  Just looking for ideas, cries of dismay, incredulity, encouragement -- whatever you all have on offer today.

paul

The manual specifies 8-bit asynchronous MODBUS via 2-pin RS-485 (A+ and B-); so, do I need to flash the pktUART driver? That is done by updating the firmware and using terminal commands, right? Gemini AI suggested something along those lines.

Hi Chris.

I´ve been using it for a while and this last archive works fine, everything seems to works properly, pretty good.

Thanks a lot.

Okay, the first option is using the USB adapter, but having a long USB cable is a bit inconvenient for my setup; the electronics are at the back of the machine and the PC is in front, in an external rack. Still, if there's no other way, I don't mind—though I wonder if the reaction time is slower via USB compared to RS485? This matters because it involves the sensor I want to use to measure the plasma's Z-axis. Then again, it might not really matter, since the head doesn't move while measuring the Z-distance; it just measures and calculates, then moves directly to the initial cutting height.

This may be obvious to everyone, but just in case: there are two different ways of specifying subnet masks. You can either spell out the mask itself, in either hex or decimal( ff.ff.ff.00 or 255.255.255.0), or you can simply specify the number of 1 bits in the mask: 24. If the mask itself is given, it should always be written as 4 dot-separated octets. If the count is given, it's usually specified with a / character, after the network itself, as in 10.10.10.0/24. (Aside: note that using the count-of-bits method, you can never specify a subnet mask that isn't a contiguous set of 1 bits. Such "non-contiguous" masks are technically legal, but are really hard to manage, so, don't do that.

What protocol does the sensor use?

Modbus is supported by Mesa FPGA cards with the hm2-modbus/PktUART
drivers.

If your sensor does not use Modbus, fora Mesa card, it would require
a driver part like hm2-modbus communicating with the PktUART driver


 

aaron wrote:

I am unable to stop the screen from going blank and

In Trixie you have to disable power manager and screensaver in startup options (Main menu -> settings -> session and startup) and add the line bellow to ~/.bashrc 

You should be able to disable the screen saver under power settings and/or Display but it has got more difficult
In my ISO, I had to go to great lengths to force this modifying xfce config files but its not in a format to share as a script as its in the live build environment
 

aaron wrote:

Thanks for all your replies.  However, I found the only way I could do the install was by downloading Debian, doing apt update, apt upgrade, and then installing LinuxCNC via Synaptic.  Worked a treat.


 

That might be a fairly old version of linuxCNC.What is the version  number printed on the splash screen? Or in the console if stating from the terminal?  current is 2.9.10

For interest, I had a pendant I had hardwired in that had a Deadman switch that had to be held in before you could jog. I was using Gmocappy at the time and I got sick of changing modes which also changed the tab. I was able to wire this Deadman switch to halui.mode.teleop and life was happy as I never had to bother swapping modes again.

I've never attempted it myself, but supposedly it should be possible.
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/drivers/mesa_modbus.html

I have always used an ordinary serial port (such as a USB to RS485 adapter dongle) to communicate with Modbus devices using the MB2Hal driver.

for the verilog/fpga developer:



Verilator and SDL2 is a good combination

PS: also added an pin oscilloscope function:

 

 

Thanks, everybody.  Turns out the parallel port card was a cheap one that, wouldn't work anyway.
Got a new one and everything seems okay.
Cheers