DDCSV1.1 4 Axis controller

[Cncdane]

Just bought this, and this has become a bit of a nightmare for me. I really like the feel of the controller, but whenever I try to run a programme, will it stop after a few lines, and the controller stays busy and speed goes to zero. Most often, I have to power cycle the controller to make it respond to the buttons. I can reset, but most often can I not even jog the axises. Restarting or resuming the program just make the controller go busy.

I have not wired up the controller to my CNC (got no endstops, and fears a  crash, given the problems I have so far). Am I missing something?

Tried code generated with several post processors from Fusion360, as well as F-Engrave, and the outcome is the same.

[MachineShopMan]

I also just bought this, and it takes time to learn it. but i'm still moving forward.

[Benedikt]

Just bought this, and this has become a bit of a nightmare for me. I really like the feel of the controller, but whenever I try to run a programme, will it stop after a few lines, and the controller stays busy and speed goes to zero. Most often, I have to power cycle the controller to make it respond to the buttons. I can reset, but most often can I not even jog the axises. Restarting or resuming the program just make the controller go busy.

I have not wired up the controller to my CNC (got no endstops, and fears a  crash, given the problems I have so far). Am I missing something?

Tried code generated with several post processors from Fusion360, as well as F-Engrave, and the outcome is the same.

I am not using a code generator (yet?) but my manually written gcode works just fine.
Have you installed the latest update?

http://data.bmuessig.eu/CNC/DDCSV11/

[Simon0362]

I have no idea how to get the bootloader to do anything more than to try to boot from USB, there is absolutely no documentation on it and I am not able to get it's source code nor can I actually dump the bootloader. I would not be surprised if it actually resides in a mask rom in the CPU.

I don't doubt your analysis but nonetheless I am somewhat surprised that they would go for a masked ROM - would it have been done on the grounds of cost/volume production? or as a security protection?
I was involved in this sort of production many years ago and there was a high risk seen for having a large stock of junk in the event that the ROM program needed modification - but that was a good few years ago and the economics have probably changed a lot since then...

[Merlin201314]

If you provide me an email address i send you some testing files that works great with this controller, so opening them with notepad will give you an idea, or you can compare them with the non working one and find the "strange G-Code".
Attached you can find a file, just rename it as (.tap) and load into the controller.
it works
1) select the file you want to load
2)press "START" instead of "ENTER", that will start the controller in "simulate" mode, so you can see the path before you start the machine.
3)be patient, if is a long file you have to wait, is not the faster controller on earth
4)press"START" again, then the machine will start
5)have a coffee and watch you machine working as aspected...
If not then your controller is not set properly or it has a problem
keep us posted
Regards
Emanuel

[Benedikt]

I have no idea how to get the bootloader to do anything more than to try to boot from USB, there is absolutely no documentation on it and I am not able to get it's source code nor can I actually dump the bootloader. I would not be surprised if it actually resides in a mask rom in the CPU.

I don't doubt your analysis but nonetheless I am somewhat surprised that they would go for a masked ROM - would it have been done on the grounds of cost/volume production? or as a security protection?

I was involved in this sort of production many years ago and there was a high risk seen for having a large stock of junk in
the event that the ROM program needed modification - but

that was a good few years ago and the economics have probably changed a lot since then...

Great to have somebody from the industy in our team.
My assumption is that the bootloader is installed by the chip manufacturer by masking it. However i was not yet able to prove this. Atmel does the same in some of there arm chips which is having a known to be working bootloader in rom.
I assume this is the same here for three reasons:

- Other devices with this CPU have the same bootlog from the loader
- the manual which i have not yet read due to lack of time states that the cpu can boot from usb which might indicate a factory installed bootloader.
- the device shows a bootloader even without any flash connected and the chip is not advertised to contain any flash

The benefits are robustness of the first stage bootloader, easier loading of a kernel or second stage bootloader like uboot.

Also they probably got it right however there is of course a risk that the bootloader has some issues.

[Simon0362]

My assumption is that the bootloader is installed by the chip manufacturer by masking it. However i was not yet able to prove this. Atmel does the same in some of there arm chips which is having a known to be working bootloader in rom.
I assume this is the same here for three reasons:

- Other devices with this CPU have the same bootlog from the loader
- the manual which i have not yet read due to lack of time states that the cpu can boot from usb which might indicate a factory installed bootloader.
- the device shows a bootloader even without any flash connected and the chip is not advertised to contain any flash

Hmmmm.....not going to disagree with such a well presented set of arguments 

And to back up your case (and further destroy mine!), I found this on the Nuvoton site:
"Mask ROM Technology

By virtue of 0.5um and 0.35um logic process architectures, Nuvoton has developed 0.5um 5V Logic embedded 0.37um Flat Cell and 0.35um 3.3V/5V Logic embedded 0.32um Flat Cell processes to support ROM needs. Nuvoton offers the most competitive Flat Cell ROM Device size in the industry. This allows us to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution for Code Mask requirements and flexible production management for ROM based products." http://www.nuvoton.com/hq/foundry-service/technologies/mask-rom-process/?__locale=en

Simon

[Dirty Engineer]

Just bought this, and this has become a bit of a nightmare for me. I really like the feel of the controller, but whenever I try to run a programme, will it stop after a few lines, and the controller stays busy and speed goes to zero. Most often, I have to power cycle the controller to make it respond to the buttons. I can reset, but most often can I not even jog the axises. Restarting or resuming the program just make the controller go busy.

I have not wired up the controller to my CNC (got no endstops, and fears a  crash, given the problems I have so far). Am I missing something?

Tried code generated with several post processors from Fusion360, as well as F-Engrave, and the outcome is the same.

FYI you have to use Fanuc/Gcode code in MM not inch. Mach3 style code will not work.  More info starting around 3:30 minute mark and going forward in this video. 
[ Invalid YouTube link ]

I also just bought this, and it takes time to learn it. but i'm still moving forward.

This is a great video of setting up this controller.

[Merlin201314]

The mm/inches are decided by the G20(imperial) or G21(metric) command at the beginning of every G-code file, and the controller is able to accept both codes.
Even the pure Fanuc G-codes are not working, you need a generic G-code generator, or it doesen't work.
This controller has a very limited set of instructions available in memory, so do not aspect big jobs, but it works and if you manage to compile your own g-code file by merging several routines it will do the job as a professional one.
This is my poor opinion .
Cheers

[Benedikt]

If we were going totally crazy, we could try to improve the program. But that would most likely end in a full rewrite. However it is absolutely possible.
What we would need to do is get a development toolchain going and then we would need to reverse engineer the motion driver interface.
Of course, we would then need to get screen output and button input working and develop proper routines. It would be a ton of work and it might not be worth it.
I doubt we can get the original source, but maybe somebody knows the people who made it. We never know.

[BrokenEye]

I think I recognised the GUI routines as being possibly by Micrium , I played about with uc/OS a while back https://www.micrium.com/products/, worth a look I think

[Benedikt]

I think I recognised the GUI routines as being possibly by Micrium , I played about with uc/OS a while back https://www.micrium.com/products/, worth a look I think

Thanks. I like how this is starting to get shape.
But shouldn't we go for a more open source and free GUI?
Basically the GUI needs to write directly to the framebuffer as there is of course no actual window manager running on the controller.

How about GtkFb: http://ha.redhat.com/f/pdf/gtkfb.pdf

This builds both shared and static libraries. For simplicity, I’ve built xpm, png, and
jpeg image loaders into gdk-pixbuf. In a real-world case, you would probably use
dynamically loaded image loaders if you chose to use shared libraries.
The stripped, shared GtkFB libraries occupy about 2 MB of disk space. Additionally
FreeType is 202KB, libjpeg is 138KB, libpng 126KB, libz (needed by libpng) 58KB.
To  give  a  feel  for  typical  memory  usage,  I  ran  the
testgtk
program  (included  in
the GTK+ sources) which shows various widgets. I opened three windows named
button box, buttons,
and
clist
and then analyzed the memory requirements. Estimating
memory requirements in a virtual-memory system is a bit hard, because memory can
be dynamically paged in and out.
The RSS size (the total amount of physical memory used, not counting pages swapped
out) was 3.4MB. In Linux a page from a shared library is not written to swap but just
discarded, as it can just be read from the file when needed again. The total virtual
memory size was 6.6MB, out of which 2.3MB were shared with other processes

After all we have 32 MB RAM and 128 MB Flash so size is not that critical.

Or we can go for QT if that one would work better.

[Merlin201314]

http://www.pv-automation.com/download
Choose the Raspberry pi2 one software and have a look, maybe can give you some ideas guys

[slim.e]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am now worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

[Benedikt]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am no worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

Hello Ralf!

You're welcome 

Have you tried the version with -dump at the end? This one will not work (as I broke something there).
The other one however should work file.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry! The version I provided does not even work with my own machine. I will fix it real quick.

Regards,
Benedikt

[Merlin201314]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am no worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

Hello Ralf!

You're welcome 

Have you tried the version with -dump at the end? This one will not work (as I broke something there).
The other one however should work file.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry! The version I provided does not even work with my own machine. I will fix it real quick.

Regards,
Benedikt

What's new in your last version?
What I'm missing?

Sended by my tapatalk

[Benedikt]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am no worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

Hello Ralf!

You're welcome 

Have you tried the version with -dump at the end? This one will not work (as I broke something there).
The other one however should work file.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry! The version I provided does not even work with my own machine. I will fix it real quick.

Regards,
Benedikt

What's new in your last version?
What I'm missing?

Sended by my tapatalk

I am working on a completely new installer that will make upgrading a lot easier than it is now.

[Merlin201314]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am no worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

Hello Ralf!

You're welcome 

Have you tried the version with -dump at the end? This one will not work (as I broke something there).
The other one however should work file.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry! The version I provided does not even work with my own machine. I will fix it real quick.

Regards,
Benedikt

What's new in your last version?
What I'm missing?

Sended by my tapatalk

I am working on a completely new installer that will make upgrading a lot easier than it is now.

Thanks, 
Did you figure out why there is a jumper inside the board?  In the link I posted they use the jumper on their board to upgrade the firmware,  and they use the same processor/fpga if Im not wrong,  but unfortunately as much as I want to help, I'm not an expert on Linux.

Sended by my tapatalk

[Benedikt]

Hi Benedikt,
I thought to join in the discussion and maybe can help testing. I own a 4axis version that originally came with a july firmware on it that has gone already. However, the version I received from thanksbuyer was with chinese front panel they did not want to replace. Today I wanted to load your yesterdays firmware but did not succeed.
The start-up hangs at the "do not unpower" splash for longer than 20 min. After restart I can not come across the bootloader ... Luckily I could revert to the former version by simply installing it the usual way.
I am no worrying if my hardware is somewhat different from yours ... Is there anything different in the procedure with installing the latest heavy mod version?
I will look for hardware revisions and dump if I get some councelling, as I am not a linux person ...
thanks for looking into this interesting piece of hardware.
Keep it going

Ralf

Hello Ralf!

You're welcome 

Have you tried the version with -dump at the end? This one will not work (as I broke something there).
The other one however should work file.

EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry! The version I provided does not even work with my own machine. I will fix it real quick.

Regards,
Benedikt

What's new in your last version?
What I'm missing?

Sended by my tapatalk

I am working on a completely new installer that will make upgrading a lot easier than it is now.

Thanks, 
Did you figure out why there is a jumper inside the board?  In the link I posted they use the jumper on their board to upgrade the firmware,  and they use the same processor/fpga if Im not wrong,  but unfortunately as much as I want to help, I'm not an expert on Linux.

Sended by my tapatalk

As I said, it puts the CPU into "Boot from USB" mode.

The new upgrade works and is now published:
http://data.bmuessig.eu/CNC/DDCSV11/install-mod-20161119.zip

It should fix anything and allow the following new features:
- Custom GUI application support (if we choose to make one)
- Allows better and easier upgrades in the future
- Can run startup scripts from the controllers internal flash or from usb
- Can display a splash screen (if you delete the splash.ppm before installing you won't get a splash)
- Easy splash changing by just copying a new splash to the root of an usb and rebooting
- Fixed the too long soft and hard limit triggered strings
And more

EDIT:
I have updated the file with a few improvements.
If anyone installing the upgrade wants to help us understand the controller more, please consider sending us the dump of the old firmware and your hardware parameters.
This can be done quite easily by copying the upgrade to the root of the usb stick (as usual) and then creating a folder called "dump".
When you now execute the upgrade, it will copy all interesting files to this folder. You can then later send us the resulting folder (zip it and mail it to us or attach it to a post).

[Benedikt]

So I am making progress...



I am building a proper C and C++ toolchain for the controller so that we can finally write own C programs for it and port some interpreters such as Lua or Python.

[Merlin201314]

More info please!

Sended by my tapatalk

[Benedikt]

More info please!

Sended by my tapatalk

I am building a C, C++ toolchain and kernel for the controller. In the background I am working on a GUI that runs on the controller...
I was also told more info about the proprietairy bootloader used. Might be worth a try!

About the firmware, just download it!
Don't bother with the dumping, it will take ages!

[Merlin201314]

So, how i install the firmware?
there's more than a folder,
Thank you in advance.
Emanuel
PS. did you got the front panel laser cutted?

[Benedikt]

So, how i install the firmware?
there's more than a folder,
Thank you in advance.
Emanuel
PS. did you got the front panel laser cutted?

Similar to how it was before. Just copy all folders and files to the usb stick.

The panel is in still made by the company. I hope it will arrive soon.

[Merlin201314]

So, how i install the firmware?
there's more than a folder,
Thank you in advance.
Emanuel
PS. did you got the front panel laser cutted?

Really courious to see it finished, i'm working on mine, just waiting for the carbon fiber sheet to arrive and then i will machine it.