How much power should a comptuter have to reliably run Groundcontrol?
I was on the LinuxCNC website, they run an OS with a real time kernel. I’m sure GroundControl doesn’t require that, but i’m kinda curious what is expected once the speed goes up.
I’m no fan of the Rasberry Pi, Well I do like the cheap SBC type units, but I really dislike the RPI’s Network going trough the USB controller and slowing down the USB traffic. So I would avoid RPI’s to do CNC stuff over USB. Still I’d like to know if there is succes with RPI running Maslow.
Would an old Netbook be strong enough to do the work?
How much power should a comptuter have to reliably run Groundcontrol?
not much. the limitation isn’t in the computer’s processing
I was on the LinuxCNC website, they run an OS with a real time kernel.
That’s because linuxCNC is controlling the stepper motors directly, and the
steps need to take place at very specific times. For the maslow,the steppers are
controlled by the arduino, so the it’s what has to do the more precise timing
(and even there, the difference in motor types means that it’s more forgiving to
timing issues anyway)
All that the computer needs to do is to feed the g-code lines to the arduino
[1], so it needs almost nothing in the way of processing power.
I’m no fan of the Rasberry Pi, Well I do like the cheap SBC type units, but I
really dislike the RPI’s Network going trough the USB controller and slowing
down the USB traffic. So I would avoid RPI’s to do CNC stuff over USB. Still
I’d like to know if there is succes with RPI running Maslow.
yes, people are using these to run the maslow.
Would an old Netbook be strong enough to do the work?
more than enough.
the arduino is doing most of the work, and it’s a 16MHz 8 bit processor.
anything that you can run linux on will be powerful enough to just send the
g-code to the arduino
David Lang
[1] ell, all that it must do is read the text from a file and send it to the
arduino, in addition it simulates what the maslow is doing, but that’s really
optional and if it gets behind in that, the cutting will still happen.
The actual traffic is pretty low compared to the USB controller’s potential throughput. Lots of people run 3D printers with OctoPi on RPis without any throughput considerations, and those are way faster (and thus higher command throughput) than Ground Control to a Maslow. Plus if you run GC on the Pi then you can unplug the network and just run from the Pi.
Do you have any personal experience with the network having issues on an RPi? I use a dedicated Pi 2 to run my Ubiquiti controller, plugged into a 1Gb switch (the smart switch says it’s running at 100Mb fdx). Runs the controller, an SNMP traffic manager, and a snappy response low traffic web server for months at a time, only reboots for updates or power outages, without any problems. I was more concerned with the SD card throughput and even that’s been more than enough to run MongoDB and the other stuff. Raspbian updates run at pretty much my full Internet speed, which admittedly is only around a couple MB/sec - don’t get affordable Gb Internet since the swamp rats nibble on the fiber if it’s that fast.
I just use my i5 16" notebook, but a Pi 3 is more than adequate. If you’re still concerned, and that netbook doesn’t work out (actually I’d like to know, I have an couple Aspire Ones sitting around). then the new $25 Beagle Bone should do the trick.
Just an afterthough, will the OpenCL level requirement kill the netbook?
Freedom is a wonderful thing. I’m going to revive an aspire one, I hope I can bring it back to life.
I’m strapping together a lot of old crap to see how far I can get on my own. (to build a plotter) To see if this machine really is for me.
2 tiny belt ‘geared’ motors with encoders from scrap printers, (these encoders are a bit more tricky then i expected)
Netbook Old Aspire One with 512 MB RAM, (I hope that RAM is not going to be a showstopper)
Arduino Mega… (still have not found thatone)
1 chinesuim L289 board
Solenoid
Marker
That said, I think it would be cool to add plotting funcionality to the Maslow by default (a solenoid to push a marker on the board with a separate gcode command. If the router is not cutting then there is no friction so an offset placed marker straight below the router should do the trick? a marker doesn’t have much friction. so the weight of the router + bricks should be enough to keep the effector steady?
This also makes it more easy to do calibration and verify the calibration. draw a couple of dots on the panel and measure the distance between the dots with a tape measure.
Draw the shape before doing the first cut to visualise the object before carving it out.
Or to mark assembly info on objects (glue here, screw 1, 2, 3, 4, dowel, version number, URL, QRcode, barcode, a MEME)
@mooselake hmmm OctoPi > GC on a tiny webserver that would also be cool in the future, allthough it’s a bit scary when the NSA and other big players start hacking into the machines.
Since the kinematics revolve around the cutting bit you’d probably get arcs where you expected straight lines.
Since the NSA records everything they don’t even need to hack in. OTOH, they now supposedly record more data than they can look at
I was in Fort Mead on a (non-secret and unsuccessful) presales call many years ago, armed guard at what seemed like every corridor intersection. Wonder what would have happened if somebody screamed and ran after seeing a swamp rat?
But the weight of the bricks is always pulling in the center of the effector right?
The NSA still hacks even when there is no need, they will because they can, and because they get shitloads of taxmoney for. So don’t loose your fingers online…
someone posted a design that you can 3D print that holds a pen that you pull the
router out and put this in it’s place. it uses the same z axis, so it requires
no code changes.
Hi all, I have a Kano computer that my son and I made. It is the RPi3b version. Its been sitting in his toy drawer for several months, so I took it out to dedicate to Maslow.
I first tried to install GC with the Kivy Pie route which I fought with for a couple of evenings. I since have easily installed Raspbian Stretch Desktop and its running flawlessly (atleast so far!!)
Is there any way to install GC from Raspbian? Its a whole lot easier to copy code from the desktop and paste to the command line (missed typing 101;)
I’m going to revive an aspire one, I hope I can bring it back to life.