Karl Schmidt wrote: >I'm putting controls on a vertical mill and I'm new to EMC2, but have a >background in electronics. > >I'm gathering information on putting together a control panel - I have a nice >jog wheel - plenty of >buttons and switches, but I'm also thinking about a mouse and keyboard. > >It has occurred to me that there is no reason that I couldn't use two >keyboards - one actual and the >second wired to push buttons. (Has anyone done this?) > > There are USB and PS/2 interfaces that make lots of buttons look like a keyboard to the PC. They're often used by people making gaming cabinets for their PCs. You can use the hal_input driver to make the buttons that look like keys look like buttons again.
>Other people must have gone down this road, so I'm hoping to get some feed >back of what is the best >way (and why). What should be a button control and what should GUI? What >drives you crazy about >your user-interface - how can this be improved? > >I'm starting a list of what should be on this panel: > >Emergency stop > > Hardware, must stop the machine, should also notify EMC that the machine has been stopped. >Flood Coolant - HOA(hand-off-auto) >Mist Coolant - HOA >Lube - HOA >X,Y,Z,Spindle HOA > > All of these would probably need to go into HAL inputs, if they need to go into EMC at all. HOA is something that decides whether EMC can control some bit of hardware, and you don't do that by politely asking EMC to lay off, you do it by disconnecting power or the like. You may have a problem with HOA for the axes - if you use servos, you'll get following errors when EMC thinks the machine should be moving but it isn't because you put it in Manual or Off mode. >Jog axis selector >Jog rate selector > > These can be keyboard-style keys or not. >Jog wheel > > This should go to hardware inputs. Wheel jogging works best when it's done by HAL/realtime code. >Tool change resume >Feed hold - pause. > > I'm not sure what Tool Change Resume is, but if it's supposed to be "I'm done changing the tool", that can be a keyboard key. >puzzling over - Keyboard covers, where to put the mouse etc.. > >I'm probably missing something - please comment - feel free to call or drop me >an email and I can >call you. .. > > I'd also point out that many external controls are not momentary, such as a jog axis selector. Keyboards are pretty much meant for short-term keypresses, not constant activation. On a normal keyboard, you can't get more than a few simultaneous inputs before things go haywire (N-key rollover only seems to work for smallish values of N, like 3 or 4). - Steve ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
