Zootalaws

Which build did you use?

You should be using the edge 101.02 branch.

Worked fine for me with a Due clone.

You haven’t given much to go on.

That has nothing to do with TinyG – it only expects text code strings.

When you ‘open’ a file in Coolterm, its expecting a Coolterm connection file that tells Coolterm how to configure its ports, speeds, etc.

You need to use ‘send text file’ under ‘connections’.

You will need the wiring pinout of your vfd, and you will need the wining pin out of the TinyG.

Do you have those?

And… high microstepping ain’t it’s all cracked up to be.

Unless your mechanicals are so coarse that you can’t get the resolution you need is the only reason I would go so high – for micrometer accurate placement on a pick and place or hundredths of a mill accuracy – at this level of hobby controller, it’s often easier to change drive pulleys or screw if that’s the case.

Going from a 20 to 10 tooth pulley or halving the pitch of your screw is pretty easy and does the same thing, although not without some cost.

I have (literally) hundreds of drive pulleys in machined aircraft alloy in tens of different sizes if you want to play around.

Late to the party…

John Lauer has set up a simple way to modify chilipeppr, to create your own modules, etc. and has documented the process well.

Forking it to add 32-step support should be straightforward.

If you find chilipeppr claustrophobic, turn off the bits you don’t want – it’s eminently tailorable.

You might want to look at creating a custom workspace, or look at the TinyG tablet workspace for some inspiration: http://chilipeppr.com/tinygtablet

LOL @ shipping – I live in the third world and am still waiting on stuff I ordered in October 🙂

The TinyG is modular, in that you can plug in external drivers and slave two (or more) TinyG together to give as many axis/control points as you need (for assembly, pick and place, etc.).

But, it looks like 32/64 bit is the way forward and the TinyG is going to run out of puff in the future. Still, it’s a cheap enough board that it can always be put to use in another project later on…

I have a number of controllers, including TinyG, Marlin on the same Xmega board as the Tiny, Smoothieboard, GRBL, and I reach for the TinyG more times than not.

I’ve got a 4-axis and 5-axis Smoothieboard I haven’t even used, despite it’s connectivity and axis advantages – the motor drivers are the same as your GRBL shield, and I’m not ready to buy some Longshine-type drivers yet. The Tiny works well with my Ox-style Openbuilds machine using belt drive. Maybe if I move to leadscrew I will want more power, but I mostly carve and cut acrylic and ply, so I don’t need a whole heap of power.

I did note that the development seems to have tailed off on the G2, for whatever reason, and that’s why I haven’t bothered doing anything with it.

The last commit on git was over a month ago and the one before was six weeks before that, then a month before – not a bleeding-edge active project, by the looks.

If I was being asked… I would look at one of the Smoothie boards – there’s a tonne of them out there that offer all sorts of options.

MKS, the maker of hundreds of thousands of Marlin boards has one that’s pretty attractive at Euro 45 for 5 axis using the DRV8825 driver (a step above the DRV8818 in the Tiny). https://www.aliexpress.com/item/MKS-SBASE-V1-3-S-32bit-Armplatform-Smooth-control-board-open-source-MCU-LPC1768-support-Ethernet/32823546897.html

It will be my next controller, I think.

Downside to using the Due? You can’t use a Raspberry Pi running SJPS to run Chilipeppr remotely as there is no USB-B port on the Due.

But, You can use a FTDI-USB module and talk to it through serial, via the Pi.

I will hook up an ESP8266 running as a transparent bridge instead, although my transparent bridge iteration doesn’t have John Lauer’s nice buffering… I need to work on that.

I omitted: unplug the Due after programming and connect the native USB port, then connect using a terminal program using 115200,8,N,1. I use CoolTerm.

tinyg [mm] ok> 
[fb]  firmware build             78.02
[fv]  firmware version            0.97
[cv]  configuration version       5.00
[hp]  hardware platform           3.00
[hv]  hardware version            0.00
[id]  TinyG ID                   02130215d40
[ja]  junction acceleration  100000 mm
[ct]  chordal tolerance           0.0100 mm
[sl]  soft limit enable           0
[mt]  motor idle timeout          2.00 Sec
[pdt] pause dwell time            0 uSec
[ej]  enable json mode            0 [0=text,1=JSON]
[jv]  json verbosity              2 [0=silent,1=footer,2=messages,3=configs,4=linenum,5=verbose]
[js]  json serialize style        1 [0=relaxed,1=strict]
[tv]  text verbosity              1 [0=silent,1=verbose]
[qv]  queue report verbosity      0 [0=off,1=single,2=triple]
[sv]  status report verbosity     1 [0=off,1=filtered,2=verbose]
[si]  status interval           250 ms
[gpl] default gcode plane         0 [0=G17,1=G18,2=G19]
[gun] default gcode units mode    1 [0=G20,1=G21]
[gco] default gcode coord system  1 [1-6 (G54-G59)]
[gpa] default gcode path control  2 [0=G61,1=G61.1,2=G64]
[gdi] default gcode distance mode 0 [0=G90,1=G91]
tinyg [mm] ok> 

It literally took me as long to do as it took to write those two posts – I had a Due on my desk and had never done this before, so it’s not rocket science.