cmcgrath5035

A couple more background questions to add to Zootalaws:
note-> Assume my questions relate to your adventures on PC.
I have no direct experience with MAC and we don’t see much MAC commentary on which to base suggestions.

What version of SPJS are you running?
Are you running SPJS on your PC or on a RasPi?
Has the Synthetos tinyG-Updater (PC version) worked for you in the past?
Has the SPJS FW updater worked for you in the past?

Why do I ask?
Some folks have had issues with one or both of these FW update methods, some often never resolved.

The methodology used by tinyG-Updater and by the SPJS updater are virtually identical
Step 1 – Connect to tinyG
Step 2 – Send $boot=1 to enter bootloader mode
Step 3 – Disconnect from tinyG
Step 4 – spawn an avrdude session which connects to tinyG bootloader, manages the download and does the verification. When ‘verification’ fails, that message is from avrdude.
Comment – You will see that Steps 1 – 4 are really the same as the manual procedures documented in the Wiki pages.

In your initial information, you say ” Chilipeppr has not been as responsive connecting TinyG…” which might be a hint to FW load problems.
My experience, chasing similar failures, has been that the updater and SPJS FW apps don’t handle failure to initially connect real well, frequently a download does not really happen and a verification failure gets reported, but nothing ever really happened but you are left thinking it was a verification failure.

Also keep in mind that all this is VERY platform and version specific. SPJS uses avrdude binaries that are compiled for PC, MAC, Linux(x86), Linux(ARM)[RasPi], etc. Not all versions are well tested. tinyG-Updater and SPJS application were both released just before Win10 was released, so we could be chasing issues with on-going updates to Win10, if that is what “PC” means to you.

Put aside FW update for the time being – that needs to be resolved for sure but core FW corruption is less likely than FW parameter corruption, those parameters are stored in EEPROM(on the controller). Parameters include those you normally tweak (the $$ list) as well as internals that are used by FW.

What caught my eye reading your initial description is your “is not illuminated (as it was before), or dimly lit …..” comment.
The motor LEDs are rather simplistic – one LED per motor is logically connected to one of the two motor winding drives. When motors are in motion, windings are always toggling and you see flashing bright leds.
If motors are at rest but energized, sometimes only one winding is required to ‘hold’ current position. There is a 50/50 chance that the LED is connected to that winding, so sometimes the LED for a particular motor is not lit but the motor is still held, until motor timeout.
Since the motor LEDs are really on/off, the explanation for a ‘dim’ LED could be too-narrow drive pulses to the LED.
Also, since direction of rotation is controlled by the relative phases of the two windings, if (one or both) winding pulse trains were too narrow to be effective, direction control might be lost – a symptom you have.

Narrow drive pulses could be caused by EEPROM corruption.
Best way to fix that is to ‘factory reset’ tinyG to the initial parameter set installed with your last code download.

Method:
Step 1: Connect to tinyG
Step 2: Create a $$ parameter dump and save it to a file on PC.
Step 2.5: Post a copy of your $$ dump to a cloud drive and provide a URL if you want, it might show some corruption (unusual values) but might not if it is ‘internals’ corruption
Step 3: From the Chilipeppr console window, send a $defa=1 command. This will reset you parameter set to something undoubtedly not correct for your machine.
Step 3.5: I usually reboot (push the button) at this point, might not be necessary
Step 4: From the SPJS console (or CoolTerm, etc), re-enter your machine parameters one at a time.

This is a rather invasive procedure, but sometimes the only way to regain sanity. A FW download would have the same effect, but for the moment that is not working for you either.

Feel free to ask further questions if I have made some incorrect assumptions.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by cmcgrath5035.

The fan voltage is provided by a 7812 Voltage regulator on tinyG. The input to VR is Vmot, usually 24V.
The 7812 is rated at 1A, but that rating is depended on thermal environment.
The 7812 used the tinyG ground plane as a heat dissipator, sharing that with the heat slugs in each of the motor drivers.

So at 0.5A draw, the 7812 will be dumping 6Watts of heat into the tinyG, which will warm things up. For sure, one of those fans should be dedicated to providing excellent airflow for the tinyG board itself.

If you are a heavy duty user(NEMA 23s or larger, long jobs, etc.) I’d suggest you seek out another solution. Perhaps a dedicated Vmot to 12V dc-Dc converter rather than a linear regulator, or perhaps a dedicated 12V wall wart for your fans. Or 24V fans (somewhat more expensive). Or perhaps supplemental heatsinking for the tinyG board.

The double response prompt is odd – never seen that. You might want to try CoolTerm (the defacto favorite of the Synthetos developers) and/or the Chilipeppr Command line interface. If they display similar double prompt, something is indeed weird
I’ll assume you are running tinyG FW 440.20?

Have a look at

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50261731/Spindle%20Test%201.doc

Also look at

https://github.com/synthetos/g2/wiki/Configuring-0.99-Other-Groups#pwm-group-pulse-width-modulation

I am not at all familiar with Mach3 interface, but have run tinyG up to 5kHz

Hint – #define P1_CW_PHASE_LO 0.13 says at LO(low) end of the PWM linear interpolation curve, set Phase (I call it duty cycle) to 13%.

The doc above should help.

I don’t recall seeing anyone trying this and have no direct experience.
Chrome browser, on Winx, Linux and MACOS has always been the defacto preferred browser for the GUI. Firefox usually works well as well as Safari, Win IE not so much.
The critical issue could be compatibility with the serial port json server – SPJS. It is compiled for X86 machines running Windows, Linux and MAC as well as RasPi running on ARM.
Do you have a Chromebook you propose to use, or is your target X86?
If I recall correctly, a target for ChromeOS was Web interface for highly portable, lower power machines.
SPJS handles all the low level heavy duty I/O, can be marginal on overly ‘thin’ clients. For example, SPJS was too much load for a RasPi !, but runs well on the more recent RasPi 2.

You might query here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/chilipeppr

Mitch

The relay was connected with the coil attached to SpOn and ground- linking the 12V+ and – spliced into the fan output which was set to 12V.

I read this to say you were attempting to use the relay to switch 12V on and off under SpOn control. Can I assume that was for test purposes? The current available from the fan regulator on tinyG will not be adequate to actually run a spindle.

The challenge with inductive spikes is that they affect circuits rather randomly, similar to ESD damage. It is possible that an inductive spike damaged the silicon chip in the area of of the SpOn output gate which possibly could have affected near by gates, perhaps the X limit inputs. That comment is about adjacent on the die, not necessarily on the pin-out (lead frame).

Based on the evidence so far in the thread, it seems as if the SpOn output port is no longer functional. I don’t know of any good options to recover it. Perhaps someone else has some ideas

crchisholm – When your are ready to tackle Spindle Speed control, give this doc a look

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50261731/Spindle%20Test%201.doc

This presumes you have a PWM based controller.
If you have a voltage based controller, they are not directly supported but several workarounds have been implemented by users.