Announcing Deckard: StreamDeck support for LinuxCNC

Aciera wrote:

Take it easy there, guys. No point getting personal because somebody got off topic.

Agreed, I didn't mean for it to be a personal attack on Rod.  Just relating how a couple of instances of his forum behavior came across to me.  The off-topic part doesn't bug me that much, tangents are how good discussions happen.  But, "you made X and I don't like X, I'd rather use Y" is not a particularly fruitful discussion about X.  Just move on and use Y, if that's how you feel.

I'm sure these discussions would be much smoother over a round of beers.  Just the nature of forums sometimes, unfortunately.
 

I have added experimental support for standard keyboard key injection into the X Window System (via the Pynput Library )  This opens the door to something like making an MDI keypad page which would be shown only when in MDI mode.  I need to do some more work to add page swapping/navigation before it will be fully practical, but generating the keystrokes from StreamDeck keypresses works.

 

 

I was shopping around on Aliexpress and found these 7" parallel LCDs:
7" LCD

These are good for being driven from an MCU, there's a pretty decent library on github with a bunch of this type of LCD. There's an SD card slot on it where I suppose images could be stored. Using an HDMI LCD would be a waste for something like this.

They also have similar LCDs with a built in ESP32 but there's no real GPIO, so it'd need some I2C IO expanders to actually read buttons. When I get around to it I'll whip up a PCB with an STM32 and an RS422 transceiver for the interface and something for the buttons, I'll probably have to experiment with that a bit. Either way I can see a DIYer being able to make something like this for well under $100

BTW tangentAudio, hope I'm not threadjacking too hard......I can take this somewhere else lol

blazini36 post=300713 userid=23364
BTW tangentAudio, hope I'm not threadjacking too hard......I can take this somewhere else lol

I'm happy to throw some ideas around for a DIY version, but let's start a different thread for that.  If only we had a subforum for user interface hardware...
 

Have you seen this?
I have tampered with it for a short period and it looks great.
I beleive it would be possible to use it as base and build a one or several LinuxCNC plugins for it!?
I use a 15 key streamdeck for tests and have had no problems to simply create keybord macros.
streamcontroller.github.io/docs/latest

Hello all,

i really like the idea of using a Streadeck for CNC-Machines. i think it opens endless possibilities and is quite handy
Thank you for your great work, I will try it as soon as possible!

I plan to use it on my cnc lathe.
Hardware of the Handwheel/Keyboard is ready now

forum.linuxcnc.org/26-turning/55587-wema...rcat?start=10#331177



greetings 
Tom

There are now a few cheaper clones/competitors out there, too. Generally called Streamdock (not deck) and it seems they come from another(?) OEM and are often sold under the Mirabox name but they are sometimes rebranded, too.
Prices are all over the place though as in my brief search, I have seen the 15 key version ranging from USD 50-100.

Not sure if the protocols are identical or it would take a lot of re-work to make them work with Lcnc. 
But they are quite a lot cheaper so might lower the bar for people interested in getting into these.

Also, on at least one of the models, the buttons seem to be a bit larger than on the real Streamdeck - which might not be a bad thing for machining use. 
 

Niiice !!

You did a nice design to integrate the streamdeck, and all the other controls into that interface unit.

Hello Steve, I just wanted to say Deckard is awesome. Really great work and thanks for sharing it to the world. The HAL-first approach is exactly what I was looking for.I’m currently installing it and starting to test it on a lathe, I see a lot of potential in it.Are you still actively working on Deckard, or planning to continue? I’m especially interested in multi-page / page switching, because that would be the killer feature for a Stream Deck in LinuxCNC. Being able to switch layouts automatically between Jog, MDI, Auto, tool offsets and touch-off and so on would make it unbeatable compared to fixed physical buttons.If you have any thoughts on where this is going, or a recommended workaround in the meantime, I’d love to hear it.
  greetings,
Tom