Mill controller with touch screen and some external inputs.

Hi guys,

I wanna build a controller for my syil x7 mill, something similar with how MachMate looks like.
I bought a 11.6 inch touch screen display, it should arrive soon.
The controller will also include the minipc that is already working fine with Mesa7i76e.
So from my controller to the mill, I will have an ethernet cable to connect the ethernet port with the Mesa 7i76e.
I also want some encoders for feed override, rapids override and spindle override + buttons for cycle start, feed hold, estop and power on. In order to do the wiring from these to the mesa board thats inside the mill cabinet, I will use a DB25 paralel port cable, it has enough wires for all the inputs.
Now I have a few questions:
1. on what pins do I have to wire cycle start and feed hold buttons? I know feed hold has motion.feed-hold (if I remember correctly)
2. the encoders for override knobs, will be some 20 pules encoders. How many encoders can I read on the Mesa, right now I am using the spindle encoder for rigid tapping. Can I wire the rest on some inputs?
3. I am using probe screen, but when I click the text inputs where I have to change the values, the on screen keyboard does not pops up. Any idea what to do on that?

These are the questions I have now, I will have many more.
Cheers!

Hi
you can use almost every GPIO of the 7i76

you shoudt take a look on the HALUI pins you can go with
linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man1/halui.1.html
IN the Postgui file its better for external buttons and safe as 1000 times per second called

connect like
net button-ext-run halui.program.run <= hm2_7i76e.0.7i76.0.0.input-00

you can use also gegative logic witch i preefer so to check if buttons is present

hm2_7i76e.0.7i76.0.0.input-00
and
hm2_7i76e.0.7i76.0.0.input-00-not

How many extra encoders can I wire to Mesa 7i76e.
Now I have used just the spindle encoder.

forum.linuxcnc.org/media/kunena/attachme...8/7i76_Anschluss.pdf

This is a good example

Cyrill

you can have a 7i83 to get more encoders if you need them
real encoder inputs
for only settings like a knob the inputs of the 7i76 will do it

The 7i76e has two MPG encoders. Remember you can also add an axis select switch. Using a binary coded switch is very efficient in terms of the number of pins used vs the available options. Initially I was going to add a MPG for both the X and Y axes but once I got my head around this, I just used one. Then I purchased a Wireless pendent with a 6 axis control. I used a Mux8/Select8 combo to access these 6 inputs (with 2 unused select options). 3 of them are still free so I'd like to experiment with the reverse run features of plasmac to see if I could run back and forth a paused program with the MPG on an unused input.

So if you used the 2 MPG's and 2 8 way binary selector switches (that would each consume 3 pins), you would be able to control 16 features with 2 MPG's very easily but this could be expanded.