Pathpilot 4th axis

So I searched for the hal file and found it. I’m unfamiliar with Linux so I still don’t know in which directory it exists. When I look at the file, there’s a section that describes the 5i25 pin outs. It shows A step and A direction both on channel 3. That would explain the weird behavior I’m seeing. So I have no idea how to change A direction to channel 4. I believe that’s what I need to do. I could change it here in the hal file but I believe the # sign means it’s just comments so that shouldn’t fix anything by changing it here.

They are normally in your home folder, linuxcnc,configs,in a folder of the machine name. You can copy and name it hal.bak, for backup before experimenting

Thank you. I’m still learning how Linux works...it’s a challenge. Any idea on how or where the 5i25 is configured?

I'm doing this off the top of my head so I may have a path slightly wrong but this should get you there.

all configuration files for Pathpilot are in
~/tmc/config
~/ refers to your HOME directory
that that path is /home/operator/tmc/config
in config are several directories.
the one you'll want is the mill one so the path is
~/tmc/config/tormach-mill

There are 3 pinned topics in here right at the top
forum.linuxcnc.org/pathpilot
They go over the basics of Pathpilot setup. I would start there then you can post questions there or return here and ask questions.

Thank you and I apologize for all the stupid questions! I just did not see the hal files...they were right in front of my eyes!

So I’m looking at the tormach_mill_mesa_440.hal file and the A axis section. The last few lines say:
#P3 pin 9 gpio 012
#A step
setp hm_2[HOSTMOT2] (BOARD) .0.gpio.012.invert_output 1

This doesn’t make sense to me. A step is supposed to be pin 8 and gpio 11 according to the comments regarding the 5i25 pin outs. And there is no place that I see A direction.

I think I’m in the right file now but not sure how to proceed. I have done some testing on the MX3660 outputs 3 and 4 and they both seem to be outputting step values when one of them needs to be the direction signal.

I’m not sure how to get this working. I think I just don’t get why there seems to be no place where the stepper direction is mentioned. This is for all 4 axis...x, y, and z. And there are a lot of mentions of this Hostmot2. I wouldn’t know why, but could the stepper direction be controlled by this?

Did you ever get this working
for the step direction change the SCALE value to negative to flip the direction

Unfortunately, I have not. I had it wired up and could move the 4th axis by using the keyboard to jog but it would only turn in one direction. I got frustrated and gave up. A friend with a similar setup confirmed I should be seeing the proper step and direction signals so I will try again soon. Thank you for asking and all the help. I’ll be back soon with more questions, I think.

If you can only move in one direction, this suggests that the current firmware loaded in the 5I25 does not match your breakout.

This is easy to check with LinuxCNC using mesaflash, not sure if Pathpilot makes mesaflash easy to get to or not...

In linuxcnc you would type (in a terminal window):

sudo mesaflash --device 5i25 --readhmid > my_weird_pinout.txt

and then look at the created text file to see the current firmwares pinout