i have been struggling to get my ox up and running and my frustration level is very high. I first had a hard time understanding how to get Jscut and chilipeppr to working together. I tried using a Pi as the serial port server and finally gave up and got a refurbished Windows Xp PC and finally got things about ready for my first job and now, WebGl has stopped working. So now, through frustration, I am thinking about switching to Mach3 and Gecko 540. My qustion is, are there others out there that have tried both? Might I be jumping from one set of problems to another? Believe me, I am not anxious to throw another $500 on the fire and I really like the open soures movement, but I really want to get past some of this frustration. Any input would be appreciated.
Been there. If you're short on time(and have limited patience) like me then going to a Mach set-up will get you past the software and electrogizmo ninja hurdles quicker to spend more time focusing on cutting and designing. I agree Opensource is great, but you have to expect a higher degree of investigation to get things right. In this case, finding people with skilled knowledge to help you or people with the exact same set-up that have ironed out the issues is about 90% of the battle. I hope you find someone or they find you here. The TinyG is fairly common so this shouldn't be so much of a hassle. That said, why did you switch to an XP with serial port or try to get a Pi as a port server? Are you trying to use an sd card or something else? When I had a TinyG I just connected through USB and that was it. I was able to get things up and going without too much trouble. Only reason I switched to a Mach system is because the drivers didn't have enough butt and I had the money. You may want to try to contact this YT user that has dealt with the same set-up. If you have the dough for Mach, a G540(or even an MX4660), or independent drivers I'd personally go that route. However, others have obtained good results with the same set-up. Good Luck and keep us posted. Joe
To answer your "why's", I bought the refurbished XP machine because I like the idea or using older equipment for tasks that fall within there capabilities. Also if I was going to have to dedicate a computer to the CNC, I didn't have another I was willing to dedicate. The Pi was because of my experience with 3D printing. I have built a couple printers and ran Marlin firmware on headless Pi's accessed through a wireless connection to my desktop. I really like this arrangement, so I tried to apply this method to the CNC, but found that the controlling software (Chilipeppr) could not run on the Pi effectively. Last night I got my win10 laptop to connect to the ox, so I am back on the chilipeppr/tinyG trail, but I still don't like the idea of throwing that much dedicated computing power to what I think is a relatively simple application, so I still am thinking that mach3 and gecko is a more efficient use of resources, so I plan to investigate that further even if the win10/chilipeppr/tinyG setup works. For now, though, I need to just get the CNC cutting. This has been too much frustration without seeing the goal of the project. So I will take what ever is the path of least resistance, to get to that goal, and then look at alternatives that meet my secondary goals of efficient use of older tech. (I am blessed/cursed with the inability to say "that's good enough" and always trying to simplify) Thank you for your response. I hope to do my dry run tonight (with no mill end) and then my first cut.
It probably would, but unfortunately, this referb is an dell optiplex 745 with a motherboard that maxes out at 2gb. I am pretty sure that Win 7 won't run in that much memory. I also did some research on buying win 7 and found it pretty much impossible to find except in the 64bit flavor. The optiplex is a 32bit machine. So any way I slice it, it means buying more hardware....then the question becomes, spend the money on another machine, or on mach3 and gecko g540. I am reasonably sure that mach3 will run on the refurb. I will probably download the trial this weekend and try it. BTW, it's not that I'm cheap....it's that I am retired.
Win 7 Home 32bit runs perfectly fine on 2gb. I run it on an old 1.6ghz atom based netbook without any issues. But I do understand the difficulty in locating a legitimate upgrade. It can be done, but it's not easy and certainly not cheap. Probably cheaper to pick up an old desktop or laptop with it already installed. Would certainly be cheaper than the $500 than you're looking at dropping for the mach3/gecko combination. But then again, the mach3/gecko combination is a worthy upgrade and is a good choice as long as your existing computer has a parallel port.
That is good to hear. I will start looking for the win7 home 32bit. That would allow me to run a more recent version of Chrome and WebGL which is what I need for Chilipeppr. I can pick up a win 7 refurb for about $150, so that is also an option I guess, but I just need to look at all my options and figure out what my meager resouces will allow. Thank you very much. And how the heck did I get the label "Well-Known" Who am I well known too? (80% retorical, 20% real question)
So, justintime...my problem is that I need WebGl on the computer I use to control the tinyG on the ox. That is a requirement of chilipeppr. Were you able get WebGl to run on xp without crashing?
