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dustMason / GCode-Sender

Node.js / Browser based control panel for my drawing machine
9 stars 3 forks source link

Not getting movement on the motors #1

Open falldeaf opened 8 years ago

falldeaf commented 8 years ago

I think I've gotten everything set up correctly, and the node app is seeing the arduino serial output, I'm getting all of the > > > and the hello world setup.

However, if I try to send gcode it doesn't respond, either for motor movement or settings.

It does say line: undefined at the end of each command, if that helps debug.

dustMason commented 8 years ago

Hi, Sorry for such a long delay in replying!

Are you using the provided arduino firmware?

falldeaf commented 8 years ago

No worries at all, thanks so much for the response!

You're spot on, I'm definitely using the wrong firmware. However, when I figured out that you have your own firmware for the GCode-Sender platform, I realized that you've got some libraries and code for an 'inkshield' in your firmware. Does your firmware still work with a standard drawbot that just uses a pen and a servo for up/down?

dustMason commented 8 years ago

It still does work fine with standard drawing tools, but unless you're using the same hardware as I did (arduino uno w/ an adafruit motor shield v2) then its not going to work without modification. As proud as I am of my home made drawing bot, I wouldn't recommend going that route unless you already have.

I later made a couple other drawing machines using GRBL (https://github.com/grbl/grbl) and an off the shelf motor driver shield with a couple pololu stepper drivers on it. GRBL is far better than my firmware for many reasons, but the most apparent are smoother movement with acceleration/deceleration for clean lines, and support for "standard" g-code (if there is such a thing as "standard").

I highly recommend using something like GRBL instead of my own firmware. Teacup is another nice option. It sounds like your machine may already have a similar firmware in place. In this case, some modification to the node code for initializing a connection and sending commands will have to be fixed up. This might be good motivation to bring my machines back out.

Want to collaborate on it?

falldeaf commented 8 years ago

I'm definitely interested! You're exactly right about my hardware setup, it's a polargraph robot with custom designed and 3d printed structure. I'm actually using an Adafruit Feather with the motor shield (which is equivalent to the v2, i2c comms, standard Adafruit motor shield), which is connected to a Pi Zero and nema 17 steppers.

For testing purposes I was using standard Makelangelo software and firmware. I haven't quite gotten it to 'print' a good picture, yet. It's overall flattened on the y axis.

I was excited to find your node based GCode sender and web interface, however! I love node and it fits really well with my setup which is a small, headless computer (the pi) attached directly to an Arduino and hardware.

I was also looking at Makelangelo's GCode sender https://github.com/MarginallyClever/GcodeSender which I thought might be command-line based but looking at the batch file I'm not so sure, anymore.

I was excited about your GRBL suggestion but it looks like there's no support for the motor shield. Adafruit sells a board specifically intended to work with GRBL but I'm hoping to stick with the feather and v2 motor shield because it's so small and fits so well with my hardware platform.