gecko 201x drives

From the original Synthetos forum (2011–2025)

Started by psppb on in TinyG Support. 3 replies, last activity Oct 2, 2015.

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Currently running a tinyG, The device works but it gets too hot on longer runs. I purchased some Gecko 201x stepper drives. I understand I have to modify the PWM steps to get the two to talk and am wondering how I do that.

Do I need to download off of Github and recompile to change the settings? I've never used github but do know a bit of C

Can someone give me a little help?

Thank you

Bill

Staff #

Bill; Can you point to a reference as to your believe that you need to modify something to interface to your gecko 201X? There has not been much traffic on this particular topic in a long time.
My understanding from seeing this

https://github.com/synthetos/TinyG/issues/61

a long time ago was that FW>412.xy fixed the issue of inadequate step pulse width.
If you are referring to

https://github.com/synthetos/TinyG/wiki/TinyG-Using-External-Drivers

note that that item is very old by tinyG standards and has not been updated.

I believe I have seen Alden comment that step pule widths are now close to 10us and that they won't get wider due to hardware/resource limitation.

When I saw your post over at CP, I took a quick look at the gecko specs, which seem a bit sloppy. Inputs 3.3V min to 5Vmax ?? I suspect they are saying that the gecko input can handle 3.3V or 5V logic level inputs, which can be a bit less than 3.3V for a high level and a bit more than 5V for a high level.

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Thanks for the post. The geckos run at 10 micro steps where the firmware in the tinyg only goes up to 8. Would this be a problem? I was planning on running the pulses through a logic translator. I'm a EE so that is not a problem. I was just worried that I might have to download a specific branch from Github, modify it and compile it to work.

Thanks for your input I'll read up on the links

Bill

Staff #

AH so, I missed that detail this time but recall seeing it in the past.

I believe this statement to be true:
The parameter $_mi can be set to any value and tinyG will use it to compute travel per step/microstep and then issue step commands accordingly. So set $1mi=10 if motor #1 is your X axis driver, etc.
This comment is sort of buried in tinyG and tinyG2 documentation.

If you are a Chilipeppr user and use the configuretinyG widget, it may barf on the value 10, I'm not sure.

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