Welcome to LinuxCNC.org

I do have an extra arduino from a old project, however I think the programming would be over my head.



The motherboard I am using is a industrial variety type and has a parallel port avaliable, it also has a digital IO port with assignable addresses, however now sure how it works, need to play with is more.

here is the mfg link

www.aaeonusa.com/products/details/?item_id=1171

You could also use a resolver as an mpg and save the par port for your spindle encoder. Using a 7i33 for the two encoder inputs and spi i/o is also an option or a 7i33 and an opto 22 pb 24. I belive mesa has a 72 point i/o card that uses spi,it aint real cheap though.

Attached is the motor spec sheet for the electrocraft servo. This attachment is hidden for guests. Please log in or register to see it.

I scanned the hiack book,but it is 62 megs and I cant attach it.If you want a copy,email me at Questo indirizzo e-mail è protetto dallo spam bot. Abilita Javascript per vederlo. will make ur life alot easier.

Alloy Craft wrote:
It would be extremely easy to write a driver for that IO.
In fact:

component emb "HAL driver for Aaean EMB-945T GPIO";
pin in bit digin-#[8] "digital inputs";
license "GPL";
author "Andy Pugh";
function _;

;;
FUNCTION(_){
int data;
int i;
data = rtapi_inb(0x2a1);
for (i = 0 ; i < 8 ; i++){
digin(i) = data & 0x01;
data >>= 1;
}
}

Is probably it.

save that as emb.comp, then sudo comp --install emb.comp at the command line, and emb should be available as a driver in HAL.
(This is untested, written on the fly, purely as a demonstration, it might not even compile)
((you might need to install the linuxcnc-dev package to compile it))

Thanks Andy, I will try that when I can, however I have to admit I have linux cnc installed and have run it a couple times but that’s about it. I am having trouble understanding the file structure of linux, I’m so used to windows, navigating is a little difficult for me right now. I need to play with it more to get a feel for it. Anyway, right now I am still trying to sort out the spindle drive. I purchased a copy of the Ge hi-ak manual and am chasing down a fault signal from the main legs of the servo drive power switching circuit. I think a transistor may be shorted somewhere but that’s just a guess right now. I was really hoping that I wouldn’t have to dive into the boards but that’s the only cheap option I have at this point. Luckily the manual has all the board schematics so tracing the fault is possible with enough patience. While I was waiting for my Hi-ak manual to arrive my Mesa cards showed up. I found a temporary junk enclosure in the back and bolted everything in. I have attached photos of my test rig that I will be using until I get a proper panel pc with operator interface built. The panel will be a 19 inch chi mei monitor with a elo surface acoustic wave touch screen. Not as desirable as a 5 wire resistive but the price was right. The connections to the old control go through 8 panel mounted db25 connectors, I reused the transition panel from the old hardinge cabinet I have. I cut all the wires behind the panel long enough so that I could plug them directly into the mesa cards. This should make things fairly simple because I will have to do very little wiring on the machine itself. Most of the wiring will be inside the operator panel. I think I need to install the mesa software to set the cards up but I am still having trouble figuring out how to install stuff in linux?








Everything looks like a rats nest right now, but should suffice for testing purposes.

Alloy Craft wrote:
[quote I am having trouble understanding the file structure of linux, I’m so used to windows, navigating is a little difficult for me right now.[/quote]I think that you only really need to worry about the things in home/linuxcncIf I remember right you have a 7i49 and 2x7i33? Pnnconf is probably what you need (it should be in the "CNC" sub-menu). Looking through the code I see mention of Resolvers, so that looks promising.
You will need the correct bitfile for the Mesa FPGA card. I guess that is a 5i23, in which case the file lives deeper down in the system files in /lib/firmware/hm2/5i23/
You will need admin privileges to move the file to there. Assuming you have the file on your desktop then you would need to use the following command in a terminal window (under applications/accessories)
sudo mv ~/Desktop/rmsv8_8.bit /lib/firmware/hm2/

"sudo" means do this as super-user, "mv" means move, ~/ at the beginning of a file path points to your home folder, / at he beginning points to the root level. I guessed the bitfile name.

I found an old post from Pete with a link to a Resolver bitfile for the 5i23 and the file is still there:
freeby.mesanet.com/rmsvss6_8.bit
This has a 7i49 pinout on P2. You can have general IO pins on the other connectors by setting num_encoders and num_sserials to zero in the config.

I am guessing that pncconf will struggle as it won't undertand that bitfile. I will have a fiddle about with the latest pncconf tonight when I get back to a LinuxCNC machine and try to figure out what you need to do.