429.04 motor power management

chmr May 30, 2014 #

Hi, I have recently updated the firmware on my tinyg to 429.01 and now 429.04, and I am having difficulties to understand the new options for power management. Could someone please elaborate what the options for $1pm (power management mode) are supposed to do, and how they interact with $mt (motor timeout) and possibly $1pl (motor power level). With just a tiny bit of testing, I have found:

$1pm=0 [disabled]: Motor power is applied when the corresponding axis should start moving. Power is never switched off again (except with $md).

$1pm=1 [always on]: Behaves exactly the same as =0.

$1pm=2 [in cycle]: Motor power is applied when the corresponding axis should start moving. Power stays on as long as any motor is moving + $mt seconds (i.e. it is switched off when the machine stands still for $mt seconds).

$1pm=3 [when moving]: Behaves exactly the same as =2.

I am missing a mode where motor power is applied whenever any asix begins moving, and is switch off after $mt seconds after machine standstill. I thought the [in cycle] option would do this, but it doesn't.

There seems to be a small bug (already present in 412.01) that motors are not switched off when a M command is executed while a move (G0) is still in progress. To reproduce:

$mt=5 (motor timeout 5 seconds)
$1pm=2 (tried it with options 2 and 3)
G0 X200
M05

If you enter each command after the previous one is finished, there is no problem, M1 will be switched off 5 seconds after the move ends. If however the M05 is sent while the X axis is still moving, the motor will not be switched off.

Another thing are the new parameters $1pl. They don't seem to make any difference, and they will always be reported as 0 even if they have been configured to another value. Do they have a meaning for a tinyg V8 board, or are they reserved for other hardware (G2) ?

Keep up the good work,
Chris

PS. My configuration: Shapeoko 2 with M1=X, M2+3=Y, M4=Z. All NEMA23, polarity of M3 and M4 reversed. For these tests I used coolterm. Tinyg configuration is fairly vanilla, can post it if needed.

cmcgrath5035Staff May 31, 2014 #

Chris
I observed the same behavior with tinyG builds 429.04 and 429.01.
I did not diagnose to your level of detail - seems we already have good data for Alden to work with.

aldenStaff May 31, 2014 #

Thanks for the info. I know there is work to do on the new power management. It's on the list to work on.

The PL parameter is in place for the v9 work we are doing (ARM based) where the power level is set by the MCU via a PWM channel, as opposed to being set by the potentiometers. On the v8 it's present, but has no effect.

chmr Jun 2, 2014 #

Thank you for your replies. Could you elaborate a bit what these settings are supposed to do when the implementation is finished?

Another quick question about the motor LEDs on the V8 board: I sometimes see that a LED is dark although the motor is enabled. This is especially evident on the dual-motor axis, when one LED is lit and the other one not.
Do the LEDs only show the current flowing through one of the motor windings?