greyhound716

mcgyvr,

Your timing is perfect, since I just sat down to review were things stand with the app. I have about a 3 week lull in another project, so I’m cycling back to TinyG.

Part of the confusion stems from my demo videos being for several different projects. Let me try to answer your questions:

#1. No, Arduino ADK board is not required for the app to work. What works and has been tested with the app thus far is using the Android in USB host mode (using a “on the go” cable, or with a tablet that has a USB-A female connector), or using a network link to a serial-to-network interface (a PC, an old network printer interface, whatever).

#2. Most of what you want is working right now. I’ve been pretty happy with the gcode streaming thus far, but the UI needs some work. For example, there isn’t a good way right now to interrupt the streaming for a gcode file, or to measure progress. When changing system settings, there is sometimes a need to exit and reenter the app to get the new state. But if all you’re looking for is repetitive gcode pushing, it does the job. What it doesn’t have is an option to initiate a homing cycle.

I’m willing to work with you to add the homing capabilities if you want to give it a shot. You’ll need to judge if the system is to the point where you want to invest the money to test it out.

There’s one other option that you might want to consider, and that’s using an AVR board as a very simple gcode streamer. One of my videos essentially does that for a different project. If you don’t really need any status info and you just want to push gcode, pulling that off of an SDcard and pushing out a wired serial interface to TinyG is super easy. You don’t even need the tablet in this case, and you can use a very simple AVR board. If you want to kick that around more or talk about your specific project, you can email me at stock@bexkat.com.

Everyone,

I’ve got a new version of the app out that works with the current firmware releases. It should work very well for downloads, and I’ve added some support for making configuration updates. More work is needed, but given my problems with reflashing my board, I wanted to get something out in a reasonable time. Let me know what you think.

Alden, I’ve been using JSON for a while now, and I really like the filtered status reports. I’ll probably start to look at the various coordinate offsets when I add more visualization support. I’ve got some base code for a continuous jog function, but I’ve disabled it until the $qf issue is debugged. In the meantime, I’ve got a step jog which works ok.
-Matt

I’m most of the way done updating the app for the new flow control and related protocols. So far, everything looks really good – I’m not getting ANY checksum errors, and I’m able to run through the download of 300mm braid without (apparent) issues in a dry run. I’m going to wire things up to my JGRO-based CNC to test it for real, and see if I can get a new video up if all continues to work well. 🙂

The UI itself needs work – right now it’s just a simple download and jogging interface, but if we’ve licked the IO problems it should be an easy thing to add other things.
-Matt

Oh, it looks like all the codes for “stat” changed (“cycle” was added, incrementing all of the codes > 1). I was testing the numbers to enable/disable various controls, and so it got confused.

BTW, I will make another video when I get this code working!
-Matt

Random bit of feedback on the JSON changes… I’m having a fun time writing a parser that supports both flavors. The “r” wrapper isn’t a big deal, since that object type won’t be visible when talking to old firmware. The contents of the body object is at the top level, and so at first I intended to essentially use a common parser block – look for those objects (“sys”, “1”, etc) at both the top level and within a “bd”. The problem is that some of the leaf objects appear to have been renamed (“posx” to “xpos”, etc), and so it looks like I’m going to need to add conditional tests for both elements or split the parser.

Not fatal, but something to be aware of as you start to harden the spec and more things get built on top of the underlying structure. 🙂 BTW, overall I like the new JSON.
-Matt

I posted a new video showing my progress so far. I’ve got the Android talking using accessory mode and am able to create programs and manipulate the jog interface. Not shown on the video yet is that I also got the gcode formation and command storage done last night. So now I need to make the link between the Arduino and Android smarter – it needs a file transfer mode, etc.

Inline video doesn’t seem to work on this site… Anyone know the trick, or is it disabled?
-Matt

I posted a short video to show the progress thus far: TinyG Arduino. Right now, I have a simple Arduino sketch that handles TinyG initialization and downloads a gcode file on demand from a MicroSD card. Not shown in the video, but I also have the Arduino Mega ADK sketch able to process connect/disconnect events from an Android tablet in Accessory mode, and being able to send messages between all three components. I should have the full Android Arduino TinyG chain working for commands and display in the next few days.
-Matt