So I have an Ox-Metal variant which uses a tinyg controller board. I'd like to get rid of the PC on top of my workbench for obvious reasons. I have a Raspberry Pi 3 that I currently have Octopi (Raspbian OS & Octoprint server) set up on to run my 3D printer. Does anyone have any experience using Octoprint to control a tinyg board? Or can I set up Chilipeppr or UGS to remotely control the tinyg through a laptop or tablet similar to how I use Octoprint? Ideally I'd like to keep Octopi in place and use one Pi 3 mounted under my bench to control both my printer and CNC router. I don't expect to run them simultaneously, but that would be a good option. If I could use a cheapish Android tablet to control both in the shop through a web interface, that would be ideal.
Well, I did a lot of digging, and just managed to get things going the way I want using Serial Port Json Server and a Android tablet. Assuming you have a working Raspberry Pi connected to your network, here's the steps I followed. Download Chilipeppr Json server, Linux Arm version from here: chilipeppr/serial-port-json-server Copy the .tar.gz file to your Pi. I used Filezilla for Windows and SFTP protocol as shown here: Trevor Appleton: Remotely copy files to and from your Raspberry Pi. I renamed it to spjs.tar.gz rather than the long name because it's easier to type without errors later. Use a terminal program to connect to your Pi, I use Putty for Windows. Download PuTTY: latest release (0.70) Run these commands after connecting to your Pi via Putty gunzip spjs.tar.gz (or the long name version if you didn't rename the file earlier) tar -xvf spjs.tar This expands your SPJS files. From here, follow along the instructions labelled: Setting serial-port-json-server to start at power up at this page: Raspberry Pi Config - Adventures in Printrbot CNC NOTE: you have to substitute the long version name "serial-port-json-server-195_linux_arm" where it says "serial-port-json-server_linux_arm", or do what I did and rename the directory spjs and put that instead of the "..._linux_arm". You still have to put in the serial-port-json-server after the slash. The linked instructions worked fine and SPJS starts automagically when you reboot your Pi. So now that your SPJS is set to start on Raspbian boot, plug your tinyg into one of the USB ports on the Pi. Using a tablet and a browser (I used Chrome on my Shield tablet) navigate to ChiliPeppr - Hardware Fiddle Once it loads, on the bottom right click on the Your Servers tab, then click on the Scan for Hosts link. Your tablet will now scan your local network for the Json server running on the Pi. Click on the Port List tab and you will see your tinyg server. Click on the check box. You have to click the bolded ^ that points down on the top right to see the jogging buttons. Now you will be able to use your tablet to home, setup and jog your machine instead of needing a PC in the workshop. I still create gcode on a PC and use Chilipeppr to send it to the Pi, but now I don't need a PC in the workshop taking up room.
Just as a follow up, I also tried using CNCjs but I had issues when doing my z-probe. It was not setting the workspace Z zero coordinates correctly on the tinyg. The cncjs author had suggested to others to update the tinyg firmware to the "edge" version which I tried, but then the z probe widget didn't work at all. I'm going back to using chilipeppr, unless I decide to scrap the tinyg and run Grbl on a Nano with some DQ542 drivers. CNCjs's gui layout is more appealing to me. By the way, there's a image for the Pi with both Octoprint and CNCjs on it here, very helpful if you want to run both a 3D printer and a CNC router from the same Pi. jeffeb3/v1pi
