Pathpilot MiniPC

Just thought I would share that the new PP PC is a Gigabyte GB-BXBT-1900
GB-BXBT-1900

for those who want to reproduce the latest controller

smgvbest wrote:

Just thought I would share that the new PP PC is a Gigabyte GB-BXBT-1900
GB-BXBT-1900

for those who want to reproduce the latest controller

I think that there might be different variants of this box. On mine I could not get the brix to work without the motors ruining rough :- forum.linuxcnc.org/plasma-laser/36837-ne...d-question?start=160

Also mine had in the bios Win7 & Win8.x Rod also has this box but his has a different bios options in his and works fine.

Mine was purchased in the UK from Scan GB-BXBT-1900 BWUP -Rod's was purchased in OZ.

I would really like to have another shot at another brix but now confused in the variations between countries .

For the PP controller it is labeled GB-BXBT-1900 there is not BWUP on the it.
So yes there may be differences, also it's possible tormach made need changes to handle issues with Linux that Gigabyte does not address though this is not likely because it doesn't make economical sense to purchase a PC for PP only to have to modify the PC itself to work

though they could have had gigabyte do a custom bios

I am thinking of trying PP with a MINIX NEO N42C-4 i have here

I've been using the gigabyte Brix J1900 and N3160 PC's for a few years.
It will be interesting to know if the Wifi works as the internal card caused unusable latency which meant that you need to use an external Wifi Dongle.

Its an odd choice for an industrial machine, There are much more robust J1900 Industrial PC's in Aluminiumn cases in the same form factor with external Wifi antennas, 2 x NIC's and RS232 ports if you want RS485 control (via a RS232 adapter). The downside is they use a Baytrail Chipset which has many settings to tweak to get acceptable latency.


But the Wifi via those antenna's works!

With your Mini PC Rod, Can you set it up in the bios to turn on when AC power is sensed?

thefabricator03 wrote:

With your Mini PC Rod, Can you set it up in the bios to turn on when AC power is sensed?

Yes I can on my UK version

thefabricator03 wrote:

With your Mini PC Rod, Can you set it up in the bios to turn on when AC power is sensed?

Yes it does. I'm a bit naughty becasue I have not turned a PC off for about 20 years. I just turn off the control box overnight. Next day, I turn it back on and restart LCNC to reconnect to the 7i76e

I like the idea of a small PC running the software. How would you compare the performance for your small PC to say that of a run of the mill desktop machine. Is there much noticeable lag compared to a normal sized machine?

thefabricator03 wrote:

I like the idea of a small PC running the software. How would you compare the performance for your small PC to say that of a run of the mill desktop machine. Is there much noticeable lag compared to a normal sized machine?

Not with the mesa ethernet hardware. You've still got all the latency issues to sort out but with Mesa hardware stepping, the latency requirements are substantially relaxed so its not a drama. It also runs sheetcam perfectly. I mount the PC behind the monitor as it comes with a Vesa bracket. I also have a Gigabyte N3160 (next version of the J1900) on my packing bench as the monitor is wall mounted so everything is up and out of the road. It struggles a bit with Win10 with 4 gb RAM, I've been meaning to upgrade the RAM to 8gb but it works for what that PC does. The last time I was on a PC shop, they did not have the right RAM for it. It will still run Photoshop and Lightroom which I use for photo processing if you are patient! You can get other Gigabyte Brix with a lot more grunt but they hurt the wallet more! I think that would be a good way to go if you have to support Windows.

I recieved the GB-BXBT-1900 yesterday and loaded PP 2.0 onto it. all went well until reboot. get the tormach splash screen, see X starting up, have a black display with mouse pointer then it goes blank, no pointer no nothing.

getting into GRUB and adding NOMODESET get past this. have yet to find any alternative to using that option.

got it loading mate and not starting PP also for now set PATHPILOT_SIM_MODE=1 in ~/.bashrc since it's not yet attached to any hardware.

make changes to grub to make the NOMODESET permament.

everything is starting fine this way.

also my display is this one from amazon
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N4LB7FT/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

one tweak to ~/tmc/scripts/detecttouch.py (might have the script name wrong as its from memory) to add my touch screen and all worked well

i did a latency test with and without the wifi module
with was ~350000nS
without was ~86000nS
that was with glxgears running 6x, and a youtube video playing @ 1024 res in both cases. was also wired to network over ethernet