Ok… silly newbie question!
I have everything up and running on my Pi3b+. Everything is working well and I have access to WebControl.
Can someone explain how I bring in my cut file to cut? Obviously I am going to “load” or “import”… but I do not see any choices in the file area. Where do I put that file to access it, and how do I pull it up in WebControl to cut it?
I really thought I had more of a grip on this…lol, but…
Thanks!
I did not pay much attention to the shield when I was assembling it. I did not even realize the shield had extra pins on it! I just assumed the pins referred to in webcontrol were the GPIO on the Pi.
I now have the my outlet box controlled by the shield and it works GREAT! The vacuum and router come on when I start a cut and stop when done! Super slick!! Love it!
Thanks again for the help!
Would be great to have a diagram or pics of the relay and board and tools a hooked up
I was actually writing up a new post with the question when I stumbled across it myself.
Wiring diagram (rough) in post 1
I am running an outlet box I purchased on Amazon: Link to Outlet box
It was a simple matter of running 2 wires from the shield to the box.
I am using AUX 1 on the shield.
I am using the GND and GPIO pins.
I run a wire between those two pins to the 2 input pins on the side of the relay box (polarity dosent matter on box).
In Webcontrol I set the “spindle automation” to “Relay High”.
Works GREAT!!
I like that amazon link. It is only rated for 15 amps with 14 gauge wire, so I can’t run the vacuum and the spindle with it (both run at 8.5 Amps), but it would make sense to switch them together.
I saw that too when I was looking into that but figured the router would never be anywhere near its rated load with how shallow the cuts are and slow the federate is. I have also started using 2mm diameter bits. My load on the router is extremely low. Beyond that the outlet does have a breaker in it.
I wanted something that was enclosed and would not have to make an enclosure for. This was a cheap “turn-key” solution.
so far so good. It is cool to see everything turn on when you start a job and shutdown as it heads to home at the end of a job.
So, I may just be impatient, but I am stuck at step 7. I am connected via ethernet and not wifi. Ping works fine, but I don’t see Docker in the list using ‘Top’, and I cannot access webcontrol using either the local:5001 nor the IP:5001 (or port 5000)
I will walk away and hope that the magic happens while I am gone for a snack (especially since my network speed is super slow out in my workshop at about 12 Mbps). But in the meantime, is there a way to force the download to happen? I am just wondering if I messed up a step earlier or something.
Really looking forward to not having to use an old laptop in the workshop anymore!
1 hour later and still no joy 
Try the pyinstaller releases… I’m having more issues with getting updated docker built.
Thanks @madgrizzle! I’ll take a look at that path… now just need another snow day (or half day) off work
I posted my experience in the wiki going headless, first using this image, second using the pyinstaller. The image took hours to download and multiple reboots, it might have been my WiFi but I was showing errors. I’ve done the pyinstaller version a couple of times, took much less time.
The first time getting the docker going was frustrating. I thought it had a corrupt file system so I re-imaged it after a 5 minute wait only to find out that this is normal. After the new image was installed, I left it for a good half hour and it runs fine.
The second pi I have set up with pyinstaller, and it went fairly quick, but it has not been connected to the maslow and used to cut yet. I’ll update when I can provide comparison information.
I’ve had the docker system (not just webcontrol docker, but docker itself) just fail for no apparent reason and couldn’t get it to work again without reburning a whole new image. And now I’m struggling with getting the docker built because of the modules needed for the documentation system.
Docker (version 0.913) is working well, but I want the LED functionality and so I want to switch from the docker version to the pyinstaller version 0.920. How is it done without reimaging the sd card? Thoughts on what services need to be killed on it before doing the install? or can I just drop files in a specific directory? and do I just move the webcontrol.json file to maintain the settings?
EDIT: for fun I just swapped the SD cards from my two RPI 3’s, so the maslow now has 0.920 on it and the same gcode will not show up on the board for the latest pyinstaller version. It appears to upload correctly and can be selected. The loading visualizaiton occurs, but then the picture of the cutout on the board does not appear… on the screen. It is miles down below the cutting area. I imported the previous settings json file and restored the backup. Same thing: solution -> right click on sled position and set as home, and it is fine.
just shutdown the docker version and follow the install instructions for the
pyinstaller version. You can uninstall docker if you want as it’s no longer
needed at that point.
the singledirectory version for the pi just has you download the zip file,
create a directory, cd to that directory and unzip the software, it really is
that simple.
David Lang
The pyinstaller version is super easy to get working, but how do you turn off the docker version so they both don’t start when it reboots?
There is a typo on the github writeup for installing the pyinstaller version. the wget file name and the tar -zxvf names don’t match. One has 0.920-rpi and the other has 0.920-linux so if you try to cut and paste, it doesn’t work without a little edit. Not a dealbreaker, but if you are just wanting it to work, it won’t and the “… backslash” in the tar line needs to be a “…forward slash”
There’s is a setting in webmcp to disable autostart of docker-based webcontrol. Disable it and reboot to make sure it gets disabled. You could disable webmcp from starting as well (its a systemd service) and that will prevent docker-based webcontrol from starting.