The Shop > Electronics & IC Programing
Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Shield, GRBL, CNC, etc.
vtsteam:
Thanks Gerrit -- I was wondering how much lag there might be -- I didn't try it RDP with Android yet, but last night I did download a few more things to play with on the RPi:
TightVNC server
FTP server
Florence onscreen keyboard
And VNC'ed to the RPi from my Linux laptop successfully. Interestingly the RPi with the particular VNC software I used didn't forward screen 0, but added new screens (screen 1, 2 etc.) when requested). So I couldn't see the laptop activity on the main RPi screen, and the laptop didn't see what was already open on the RPi. Not a big deal for the CNC purpose of running headless, and probably there's a solution somewhere anyway.
I did try aFreeRDP client on Adroid, but couldn't apparently get the parameters correct to connect via VNC (I tried ports 5900 and 5901, and the IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:1 methods). This also probably has a solution in settings somewhere.
Finally the Florence onscreen keyboard wasn't working via VNC, but does work normally on the RPi, so it's possible to get rid of the wired physical keyboard for doing simple work (like CNC). That's one less wire and device going to the board. My mouse is an IR mouse, so now the board only has to be located near the screen, with no wires draped across the living room floor (or shop, when it comes to it).
I do have a bluetooth keyboard and a bluetooth USB dongle, I might try to see if I can get those to work with the RPi this evening.
BTW, the Florence keyboard seemed to have some small bugs -- there were unlabeled function keys -- only the alphanumeric keys had labels. In the past I had tried another virtual keyboard that I liked a lot -- I think it was called xvkbd or something -- I'll have to look that up -- I think I even customised it at one point.
Another possiblility for CNC, is that there is a lot of talk about a new official low cost touchscreen about to be released for the RPi. That would make a very good combo, and make a pendant style setup easily possible, assuming a useful GUI for GRbl could be found to run on it.
In the past when I tried something similar to control LinuxCNC on a dedicated computer from an 8" tablet, all of the GUI's I tried had checkboxes, touch controls and virtual buttons that were WAY too small to hit reliably without a stylus, which is clumsy and unreliable for this kind of thing. So while it was possible to run LinuxCNC on something via VNC or RDP on a tablet, it wasn't useful. The same will be true of Grbl without a purpose made tablet GUI that has big buttons.
Enjoyable playing around with this thing :coffee:
vtsteam:
Just to update things:
I ordered an Arduino compatible UNO board and a screw terminal breakout board (shield) for it last week.
I've compiled and installed GRBL Controller from the zapmaker website on the Raspberry Pi.
I've compiled XJKBD 3.3 virtual keyboard for the Raspberry Pi. It works perfectly now.
I've successfully connected to the Raspberry Pi with Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) from both my laptop, and my 8" Android tablet (Acer A1-830).
Just waiting for the Arduino stuff to arrive before hooking it together to try it out. :zap:
vtsteam:
The Uno (clone) arduino board and the screw terminal shield (board) arrived last night. Total cost with free shipping was $14!
The Uno included a USB cable and header pin strips for connecting to the terminals on the board, but the shield will replace these with wiring terminals.
I was confused by the terminal board when I first got it as it was a single PC board, and it didn't seem to match the header positions on the Arduino. I eventually figured out that there was a score line on the board and you simply needed to snap the board into two individual boards and to rearrange them to plug into the Arduino. I almost sent it back to the seller! :doh:
Below are the parts received:
vtsteam:
And here are most of what it takes to run a CNC rig the way I'm going to try it:
Raspberry Pi B+ board
Uno (arduino clone) board
Screw terminal shield (shown here plugged into the Uno board)
IR USB mouse (not essential -- you can run headless via RDP if wanted)
5V 2A wall wart -- (the Arduino doesn't need one -- it receives its power via the USB connection to the Raspberry Pi)
Stepper driver (this one would drive one axis and can handle up to 5 amps)
Not shown:
Monitor -- (or you can probably run headless via RDP)
Stepper power supply
Stepper motor
Wiring
Optional:
Hard keyboard (I use a virtual onscreen keyboard -- the mouse picks the letters)
USB wireless modem (or ethernet cable to RPi) if you want to use RDP to run headless)
Software:
Grbl
Grbl Controller
vtsteam:
I've hooked the boards together and run the Grbl Controller software on the Rasperry Pi which is now controlling the Arduino running Grbl itself.
And tonight after some exploring I've finally managed to get my laptop computer to wirelessly connect to the Raspberry Pi and run the desktop.
I could now disconnect the mouse, keyboard and monitor from the RPi and just run things from the laptop.
As an experiment, from the laptop I ran the Grbl controller, and loaded an old G-code file and ran it. Here's a snapshot of the running job:
Now to see if instead of the laptop, I can run it from my 8" android tablet.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version