I set my BBB aside when the Xylotex cape I had forced normally open limit switches. I was then going to use it with my lathe and got started with the quadrature encoder 3D printed holder but things stopped there.
On the mill the surplus PC c/w parallel port was ultimately cheaper than the BBB and the cape. I still needed a monitor, keyboard and mouse and for the BBB also a USB hub to connect those. And both the cape DB-25 or the PC DB-25 plugged into my break out board. So since the cabinet for the DC Servo and stepper supply could also hold a PC I couldn't see a reason for going on with a system that had slow video and with the hub and all was kind of messy for wiring. And there's the rub. Other than as an experiment is the BBB worth it? A big Bridgeport has the room for a full sized PC. A small Sherline maybe is better with something like a Beagle. I don't say this lightly. I have 3 of them. Along with the Xylotex, a replicape for 3D printing , several display capes -- the manga screen was a total loss with really bad touch screen to make it worthless other than as a display, A CAN bus + RS232/485 cape. Proto board capes. Some of the display capes step on pins that would be used for the encoders. So for now my Beagles remain in the various boxes. Perhaps, before the hardware is too old I might create that headless ELS for a mill. One that serves as DRO and power feed control and links via Ethernet to a PC that does the actual G-Code translation. But for that an RTOS with the TI development environment may be more suitable. John > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Murphy [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: January-26-20 5:19 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Emc-users] Real-time OS for machine controllers (Jon Elson) > > I think with Machinekit they seem to be trying to add too much too soon. > > From my Boof Head point of view, too many Bells & Whistles to keep the > "Maker Community" interested and the basics have seemed to be > neglected. > TBH I could also be wrong on this point. > > In saying that I did use Machinekit & a BeagleBone Black with a custom > cape. Tho I did jump to Linuxcnc with a couple Mesa boards as I found > LCNC Community support to be light years ahead of Machinekit. > > The Machinekit google seems to be active, but no where near as active as > the various LCNC support channels. > > >> Machinekit has done some very nice things. Where they fall down is > >> they seem to have no stable release model. It seems that anybody can > >> change anything and there is no fallback to a stable release. > >> > >> I tried to build Machinekit for the RockPro64 and I ran into changes > >> several months old that had broken the system but were undiscovered. > >> The �developers� were running on their own systems that compiled and > >> ran without testing the current branch. But, there was no way I could > >> find for someone else to check out a system that compiled and ran. > >> > >> Eventually I was able to fix the problems and compile, but, it left > >> me wondering about the whole system. > >> > >> > > Yes, Machinekit seems to have collapsed.� There is a fully workable > > version from 2-3 years ago, but I can't tell that > > there is still any work being done on it.� Which is too bad.� On the > > other hand, I think there is a distro for running > > LinuxCNC on the Beagle Bone, and maybe that is the best way forward. > > > > Jon > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Emc-users mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users > > > _______________________________________________ > Emc-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
