alden

No, it looks like you are doing things correctly. The lowest LED should turn on when you issue an M7 or M8, and turn off with an M9. The corresponding pin should go low and high (respectively). Does the LED react?

You can try running the on-board diagnostic tests. There is one for the Mcodes. Type $tests and you should get the help screen I believe that Mcodes test is $test=7

The min / max switches are actually supposed to reset the board, That’s what they do. The idea is that if you hit the limit it’s supposed to stop all action.

Your wiring is correct. An NO switch across the switch contact and the ground.

The only other thing I can think of is that the X direction signal is not making it from the Arduino to the shield. It’s the D6 pin on the arduino digital connector. Do you have a pin bent out on the shield? If you have some way to test this line like an oscilloscope or a volt meter that could be checked.

Other than that you have done all the diagnostics we would have done. Perhaps you got a malfunctioning board.  Please contact us at synthetos at gmail dot com for a replacement. Are you in the US or overseas?

Thanks for your interest. Here’s some status on your points.

1) Power management. To summarize (if I got this right): you would prefer that power management settings take effect immediately instead of at the end of the next move. This has been requested before, and has been added to the issues list on the github https://github.com/synthetos/TinyG/issues

We are planning to roll up a set of changes in preparation for the 1.0 release planned for October and will include this.

2) Limit switches / noise. Are you using the switches as limits, or just for homing?  If just for homing then set switch mode for homing only, and this will take them out of the loop during cutting operations. However, I imagine you already considered this and are actually using them for limits. Progress has been made on Issue #16 – Noise on limit switches. I have coded the switch ports to use normally closed switches as a switch mode option – which is probably the preferred way to do this. This has not been tested yet, but is one of the items for the 1.0 release.

Before then, however, you can try putting a strong pullup on the hi-side of the switch. Since I can’t draw here I’ll have to describe. On the input side of the switch lines on GPIO2 – which are the even numbered pins on the switch connector – run a 2.7K resistor to the 3.3volts on the GPIO2  connector. See https://www.synthetos.com/wiki/index.php?title=Projects:TinyG-Hardware-Info:#Interface_Pinouts

The TinyG v7’s have these pullups on board but the earlier revisions do not.

3) Disconnecting the motors for hand operation. I do not believe it is necessary to disconnect the motors before turning by hand. But you raise an interesting point. There are 2 cases – one when the board is powered up and one where the board is not. Presumably you would want to know it’s OK in either case. We have not had any of the TI’s blow out on us, and we have been doing this (turning motors by hand) for 2+ years. That said, I will torture test one of my boards and report back to this forum. I believe it is OK, but don’t want to steer you wrong.

– Alden

• This reply was modified 12 years, 1 month ago by alden.

One thing – when you send the old v2 board back can you please also include the motor connectors you will not be needing anymore?

The new v3 board you are receiving has screw terminals instead of the quick-release connectors. So you will want to cut the connectors off the motor wires, strip them and terminate them directly at the terminal blocks. It’s the cut off ends I am interested in for diagnostic purposes. If you had problems making these connections I’d like to know so we can help out other people that might have the same problem.

Thanks!

Both X and Y motors turn, but only in one direction. Z does not turn. Your Y and Z are not switched, it would appear.

What motors are you running? I have gotten bad motors before from surplus (once).

Also, can you exchange the Z and Y motors and see if the non-rotating motor moves to Y?

Since you have a grblshield v2 then you had to make connectors for the motor. Did you use the connector kit or make these on your own? Can you make sure the crimp connections you made in the connectors are good? If one of the contacts does not make connection then the symptoms would be as you say. If you have an ohmmeter you should be able to see a small number of ohms (like 4 or 8 depending on your motors) between each of the motor windings. THey are arranged on the plug as illustrated here:

https://www.synthetos.com/wiki/index.php?title=Using_the_grblShield#Wiring_the_Motors

Great. Let me know if it actually works. We should the make the changes to the code base for compatibility reasons.

I have never seen that error because I have not tried 6. Thanks for hammering through this.