GUI for TinyG controller

Has anything been done with regard to building a controller for the TinyG? As I mentioned in another post (CNC build with TinyG), I’m thinking about building a controller based on a beagleboard (I originally looked at the pandaboard and raspberry pi, but, have since settled on the beagle). I am planning to interface the beagle with a touch screen (probably 10 inch or 25 cm). After having my MacBook covered with saw dust on more than one occasion, I want something that is a little more dust proof. Riley and Saci had mentioned that they were working on a controller, and didn’t want to re-invent the wheel, so to speak. I’ll probably be writing the code in Javafx, as it is supported by almost all major OS’s, which Riley pointed out.

jmnoeth: I have been working away trying to get the ‘tgFX’ up and going. I have ran into a bit of a problem however. I am trying to get “flow control” working. There is a bug somewhere in the threading that is creating a race condition I am pretty sure.

If you want to sync up on what I have so far toss me an email

rileyporter at gmail dot com

Riley

Sounds cool. I’ve got a basic sketch of my UI for the Chumby written in perl, but it looks like we’re driving toward something similar. If I can get your stuff to run on the Chumby, I’d be happy to help with development.
-Matt

The 0.93 dependency is the JSON code in TinyG. All communications between the GUI and the board is in JSON. This opens up new possibilities such as simplified synchronization of objects between the GUI and the board, and simplified GUI programming (serialize / deserialize operations replace knotty little parsers)

Here’s the link to the JSON spec.
http://www.synthetos.com/wiki/index.php?title=Projects:TinyG-JSON

It’s pretty much identical to the command line but there are a few differences.
– JSON can deal with all axis or motor parameters in a single command as opposed to multiple round trips
– It can also treat the motor or axis as an object, as opposed to a collection of unrelated parameters (see the spec to see what I mean)
– You can configure the contents of status reports using JSON, you can’t in text mode.

On the flip side:
– Text mode has displays for “groups of groups” – like all axes, JSON does not. You have to get each axis separately. This is because there’s really not enough memory for arbitrarily large JSON strings.

greyhound716,

For parsing ? is a pain. I would just issue a {“sr”:””} vs a ? and it will give you a JSON update.

You can also do a {“sys”:””} which gives you a JSON message for the “System”..
Want to get a motor specific setting list? {“1″:””} Could be 1234 any.

Obviously read more on what Alden posted. But .93 is a significant upgrade (in many spots also) to the ability to talk to JSON model.

ril3y

greyhound,

Perhaps you still can use this. Kinda.. I did a SocketMonitor class so that I could write and android app. Connect to tgFX via a socket and get “updates” (think hand held JOG / DRO) via wifi.

See that.
https://github.com/synthetos/tgFX/blob/master/src/tgfx/external/SocketMonitor.java

Its pretty incomplete (as is tgFX in general). But you could connect to tgFX via a socket and then do whatever you want. You get status updates too. I know this method requires a “server” so to speak. Just thinking out loud.

Riley

nikky
You are adding on to a VERY OLD thread (last post over 2 years ago).
I suggest you start a new thread, as all previous items in this thread are very out of date and may/may not be accurate in the current tinyG environment, FW 438.02.

http://synthetos.github.io/

And be a bit more precise about what you are wanting to do; will your Gcode sender use USB for serial communications, or hardwire to internal serial port?

Have you reviewed all the Wiki Items on Gcode communications with tinyG?

As a general statement, the tinyG bootloader should be protected from improper serial commands, but sometimes bad things can happen when you make hardwire connections.