We have started development of Mach4 motion control plugin that supports SimpleMotion V2 bus. This means that ARGON and IONI drives can be controlled by Mach4 without any extra hardware. It just needs the SMV2 USB adapter and drives. The plan is also to allow control of few I/O signals through that plugin.
The plugin will be fully open source and available on GitHub if Artsoft sample plugin code license allows that (will be determined later).
SimpleMoiton V2 protocol looks like this on a low level
Granite Devices will be on Christmas holiday for the next week. I wish merry Christmas to everyone following this blog! :)
wonderful !!!
hello Tero merry Christmas to you
I am so happy to hear this news
because I already have a license mach 4 (Win XP)
how do you think manage all the inputs / outputs required for CN?
example
– coolant On Off
– Spindle On Off
– ….
I think an output input card connected like the driver, on the SMV2 bus be the most versatile and most reliable
Yes, there are plans for IO cards that talk SimpleMotion. Meanwhile, we can use the extra IO on drives to do small things like coolant/spindle control.
Happy holidays!
Thanks Walter!
It would be great something like that for linuxcnc to.
Merry Christmas !
Indeed. Implementation for LinuxCNC needs at least real time capable RS485 adapter (which USB is not) but otherwise there should be no problem making such driver. I will study how it can be done.
I think that LCNC has now a EtherCAT driver (you plan to implement this in ioni pro version).
If that is possible, maybe it will outperforms the step/dir ou analog input methods?
EtherCat would be amazing. I did not catch on to that initially when you were asking about the pro version. How do you intend to make that happen?
Is IONI capable of doing this with a simple physical adapter connecting traces to an RJ45 connector.
Or is this going to be an ethercat to pulse/direction converter,
or ethercat to SMV2 converter. Or what?
Very curious…
It’s going to be a ECat to SimpleMoton bridge, a separate device. One bridge for multiple drives is cheaper than having direct ECat support on each drive (based on component costs).
I forgot that LCNC has ECat support! Thanks for pointing out. Now the goal is also achieve compatibility with that.
Cool. Can’t wait for these to become available.
Converting KmotionCNC to simplemotion would be great as well- he provides sources with the installation.
Just checking in has there been any updates on the project mach4 or LCNC with ECat plugins
I have focused on EtherCAT bridge lately and I think it can be ready on Q1 2017 (optimistic estimate). EC on LCNC seems to be already available but seems like difficult to configure right now. I think we need to fix that side too.
Mach4 plugin needs attention and I hope to get back to it after EC bridge is ready.