EMC2 RPi Hybrid hack?

Hope this proposition has not been covered elsewhere...
I am to a degree rather rusty and rather out of my depth as I have not done much tinkering since 6502/Z80 days
Anyways, here goes.

The Gertboard has provision for an Atmel '328
There is now a version of EMC2 for the AT328 Arduino

See
http://emc2arduino.wordpress.com/
and
http://emc2arduino.wordpress.com/faq/

So the proposition is essentially splitting EMC2, the brains & front end/GUI of emc2 on the Pi while the realtime priority IO is done by the AT'328 on the Gertboard. This would allow (could it be done?) the rest of the IO on the Gertboard to look after the low priority non realtime IO for other functions for a workable and flexible CNC - Robotics solution.
Keeps the hardware all RPi/Gertboard.


So that is the concept I have imagineered.

Is this a sane proposition? Or am I well past at my sell by date?

Comments?

NB
I am not the guy to do this.....

Good idea, go ahead and do it!

You may not be the one that successfully does it but you should at least try otherwise you should not be taking about it!

Good idea, go ahead and do it!

You may not be the one that successfully does it but you should at least try otherwise you should not be taking about it!

Well.
I believe that discussing an idea - proposition (talking about it) is usually a good place to start, hence posting it in Community/ General Discussion.
I also believe we are trying to achieve a similar outcome, but from a different standpoint and method. We are all limited to the rescources we have available.

So.

I look forward to constructive comment - input - critique to get the ball rolling in the first instance.

I eagerly await a Gertboard to tinker (start trying) with.

Interesting idea - I hadn't heard of emc2arduino before either, so it made an interesting read. Sounds feasible enough, if not using the Gertboard, then wiring the MCU and terminal blocks to some veroboard.

Have you tried running EMC2 on the Pi yet? I wonder how the GUI would cope with so little RAM and slow floating point? Of course if was just being used as a gcode interpreter, that would be simple enough (and still useful enough; I seem to recall some people using bits of EMC2 entirely from the console).

I've got a 3-axis machine in the garage, waiting to be tinkered with. I might join this thread when its turn comes up! I want to do something USB with a PIC18F2550 (I've already got USB code for that chip, and I'm sure I could replicate the emc2arduino code in C).

Very interesting !
Unfortunately on site emc2arduino I haven't found any released version of LinuxCNC that could be able to send only GCode commands.
REgarding integration of raspberry pi with arduino than it can be done over serial port getting rid of usb .
Here I think that are needed some configurations.

Kind REgards,
Daniel

Very interesting !
Unfortunately on site emc2arduino I haven't found any released version of LinuxCNC that could be able to send only GCode commands.
REgarding integration of raspberry pi with arduino than it can be done over serial port getting rid of usb .
Here I think that are needed some configurations.

Kind REgards,
Daniel

Quick update , owner of emc2arduino just replied me and said that LinuxCNC can be fairly easy configured to use a serial port.
Still remain the problem to get LinuxCNC on Raspberry...

I just thought I should post in case people are not following other threads related to this.

EMC2/linuxcnc is fairly simple to compile and run on the RPI so long as you only want it to run in sim mode.

Realtime kernel support will need a bit of work.

Check this thread viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1847

or this thread for more realtime info viewtopic.php?f=63&t=2376

It would seem that this concept has already been done with a PIC chip:

It is a USB dongle device providing realtime motion without the need for a realtime kernel
IE a cut down front end of EMC2 - linuxcnc driving a microcontroller (Not the Atmel though) and is available here

http://www.ecklersoft.com/

I have successfully compiled this, well without apparent errors and got the gui up, on an RPi to the point that I need to do further tests/evaluation on the ecklersoft hardware/device and some real steppers.

I will post back progress and info as it occurs, and post a "How To" compile when I am a little more confident about it working something like it was intended to

Special thanks to Toby Davies for sorting the issues with tcl

thanks for pointing to this solution.
Unfortunately it's a closed source solution . Even if that guy opened a code repository on http://code.google.com/p/rtstepperemc/ he didn't post a thing there.

Br,
Daniel

It would seem that this concept has already been done with a PIC chip:

It is a USB dongle device providing realtime motion without the need for a realtime kernel
IE a cut down front end of EMC2 - linuxcnc driving a microcontroller (Not the Atmel though) and is available here

http://www.ecklersoft.com/

I have successfully compiled this, well without apparent errors and got the gui up, on an RPi to the point that I need to do further tests/evaluation on the ecklersoft hardware/device and some real steppers.

I will post back progress and info as it occurs, and post a "How To" compile when I am a little more confident about it working something like it was intended to

Special thanks to Toby Davies for sorting the issues with tcl

MrGreg, regarding the Rpi and the ecklersoft dongle, any progress? I did build my own CNC unit and I would like to go for a new challenge, hooking up my RPi.
Please post,
Ed van den Enden

I have started a fresh thread Re the ecklersoft dongle, rtstepperemc software, with a brief initial "How To" to compile the rtstepper software
I will post related stuff here from now on

viewtopic.php?f=37&t=24683