QTDragon operation

Thank you again for your reply @cmorley.

You don't see this?

No. I have never, ever, seen a "Operator Error" dialogue box.

What I see is - I load the bad file. The preview panel doesn't update (but that also happens when the file is not terminated with M2 or M30). I hit 'Start' - the Z axis moves to a safe height, the spindle starts, then I get an "Error" dialogue box (top right of screen) saying "Unknown g code".

The machine is in use at the moment. When it's free I'll do a screen capture.

I'm happy to wait for the 2.9. As long as it's not going to be painful process to update... Will it be a complete OS replacement?

Is there a list of what issues are being addressed in 2.9?

The current issues aren't stopping me. They are just a nuisance.

Kind regards
Pedro

 

The process of installing Debian Bookworm and linuxcnc is documented here. This will give you qtdragon.
linuxcnc.org/docs/2.9/html/getting-start...etting-linuxcnc.html
You will need to do the steps in heading #9 to get the current version of qtdragon as its had a lot of changes since Bookworm was released.

Thank you for your reply @rodw.

Sounds like it's going to be a painful process...

Not released - does that mean people are still working on issues?

Kind regards
Pedro

There are a handful of outstanding issues in 2.9 to be fixed before it is released. (About 6)
But the Debian policies mean that it can't go into the Bookworm repos when it is released.
Because QTdragon is pretty new, you need to be up to the minute as it does get changes pretty regularly as its tidied up.
So regardless, you need to  install the custom repository that will allow you to install upgrades at any time by a couple of commands.
Its not hard. Put an hour or so aside and you'll get it done like many others who have followed the instructions I wrote in that link.

Thank you for your reply @rodw.

Firstly, I will wait until it is officially released before I do anything.

Over the last few weeks, I have accumulated around 6 hours setting up the network config (plus other things) on this debian. I recon there's a 99.9% chance of debian losing that config with an upgrade.

My time maybe better spent on learning how to build it on OpenSUSE Leap...

Kind regards
Pedro
 

That might be trickier than you first think. Looks like you will need to compile the preempt-rt kernel as there is no package for it in Ubuntu.

I'm having an error and I'm suspecting it might be that QTDragon doesn't yet support 5 axis?

I had it working using pncconf, with 4 axis. 

But when I manually changed my files to add in my extra axis (and I must admit, a joystick pendant), it always crashes.

Could be me, but the idea that it's limited to 4 has crept into my brain and now I'm hesitant to pour time on it.

In case that's not the problem, can you let us know it should work?

And whatever my problem is, if helpful, I've attached files.

"QTError.txt" is the error messages from the "pre-crash" screen that is working hard to help us with errors.

When I click "Retry" on that screen, I then get the full-on LinuxCNC errors screen. I clicked "Create Report File" and that is attached as "linuxcnc.report.txt" and "linuxcnc_info.txt"

My LinuxCNC version is: LINUXCNC - 2.9.0~pre1+git20230208.f1270d6ed7

The screen looks very exciting! And I'm really eager to get a hold of a working probe gui... according to others on this thread (Rod, shout out), it looks like you might be positioning QTDragon to be the place for that on 2.9 and forward. If so, very much looking forward to it.

If not, then off-topic... is there a working probe screen anywhere on 2.9 atm?

Thanks again!



 

Vector, can you start Linuxcnc from the command prompt (linuxcnc -l opens the last config so I use that a lot but opening from the chooser works too)
Share the output as you get better error messages.

I'm not understanding why you are using an axis for a pendant though.

I have not tried for a while but I thought probing in qtdragon was pretty much fully working.

qtdragon does not support 5 axis yet. I'm working on it.

Thanks Rod!

In this case, as cmorley just confirmed, it's probably a 5 axis problem, so I will wait for this exciting work to get a little farther along. (I guess I'm going to break out some manual macros for now).

Sorry about the confusion on the pendant, it doesn't have anything to do with extra axis... I only meant that my configuration is complex enough because I have a pendant hal file on top of the basics that I might well have caused my own problem.

Also, I tried the "linuxcnc -l" trick... but because it crashed before it could start, when I use that command I get the last working configuration, which doesn't have these helpful error messages.

So in this case  I had to try the full command with the path to the .ini file, and the contents of that terminal window is attached. The log files didn't show up where the messages in the terminal said they would be.