A few days with GRBL

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    Default A few days with GRBL

    I've set up an Arduino Uno some time ago with an older release of grbl just to poke around and see what all the fuss was about. Here is what I learned and saw at that time:

    The pulse trains and ultimately the motion itself appeared to be adequate for a small machine.
    I/O was limited to the very basic and typical needs, again, well suited for a small machine.
    Available GUI's were equally targeted towards simple environments.
    Installation of many of the GUI's were unnecessarily difficult.
    Decent documentation... sometimes any documentation at all was non-existent.
    User "ergonomics" of the necessary windows, tabs and buttons was for the most part pathetic.

    I had some time to play around the last few days and thought I would look into whether the GUI world for grbl has advanced to the point where anyone familiar with other popular hobby cnc controls could use or understand them. Just to be clear, I would be basing my judgements on what I have already seen and experienced in hobby controls like that of Flashcut, Mach, LinuxCNC, Eding, DeskCNC, Etc. These are all programs that the majority of users could walk up to and semi understand what they were looking at, and obtain results they expected.

    My first step was to seek out what was out there, then download them all. Before installing, I went back and reviewed their related web pages to see if I wanted to bother installing them, based on the fact that I wanted to specifically look at how they would apply to a simple 3 axis router or mill. I loaded grbl 1.1 on a new Nano and connected it to some drivers and motors I had laying around. In no particular order, I so far have either played with or attempted to play with the following:

    UGS - Rather useless for anything more than just sending it seems. I was able to home the system, set zero's etc and run some g-code. I never could learn much from the "dro's" as they never reflected anything that made sense location wise, but at least I knew grbl was installed and my limit and I/O switches were working as well as my outputs. I need to come back to it to see if I can find the thrill others must have.

    Denvi/Candle Interface - Easily connected, probably one of the best looking screens I have come across. Ergonomic and visually makes sense. Has a stunning display of the tool path that updates tool position while the machine is running. I have not seen anything like this in any others I have tried so far. This would be my hands down favorite if it were not for a few things I can not get my head around. For one, when you jog in the X+, Y+ direction, the DRO's go negative ! (Z- goes Positive). Now one would think there is a reason for this AND a SETTING to adjust it, but I can not find anything. This alone almost makes me think the program is not useable for a small mill. Another thing is that jog "step" adjustments appear to actually be " motor steps" and not actual dimensions (I have to stop long enough to fully analyze though). In other words, if you set the step to "1", one would think it would move 1 INCH. But that is not the case. Sadly, it looks like the program has not been updated for a year which is a real source of agony as THIS IS THE ONE I GRAVITATE TO the most so far. Crisp, clean, multiple tool path views, zoom, pan, Iso, etc. WHERE IS THIS DEVELOPER ? They should finish this one !

    109JB's Interface - Very simple appearance, but could not explore it because it would just crash when I would attempt to connect to the Nano I set up with grbl 1.1.

    bCNC Interface - I've never been a big fan of the "windows ribbon" look, but I could see that the screen looked to reasonably separate the 'geek junk' from the machining stuff most of us actually care about. Sure, seeing the verbose communication with the arduino is handy for troubleshooting, and I am glad bCnc does not burden the user with it on the main machine control screen. It installed easily on my Linux Mint laptop, but unfortunately, I could not for the life of me figure out what PORT I was supposed to use to connect with. I thought it might be a simple matter to install bCnc on a windows laptop where the PORT might be more obvious... But a windows install is rather painful, so I did not test it yet. Why do things need to be this difficult ?

    source rabbit interface - on Windows - super easy connection, understandable window, dro's that updated, decent window for very basic operation. But, I did not see an easy way to make it RETAIN that I wanted inches as a default thru out and while it has a "visualization" of the tool path, you only pop up an image of what the path looks like and no actual tool indicator following any path. It was very basic, better I thought than UGS, but certainly not enough to make an old hobby control user happy.

    grbl panel interface - easily connected, looked to be quite useable as a hobby router or mill control. Setting Machine zero as well as program zero made sense once you understood what to do (note that I edited the HOMING_FORCE_SET_OPTION so that homing set machine zero at zero and not some freaky negative meaningless drivel). What I did not like is that the verbose communication with the board is on the main page (users running a machine dont care!) and there are buttons on screen that should say things that makes sense. Instead of saying "go to specl Posn1", users should be able to label the button with things that they are familiar with like "go to machine zero" or "go to program zero". Some buttons should have a second chance... unfortunately, if you hit the home button, its going to home...... if you hit the zero button... it immediately zeros... no confirmation that you may have accidentally hit the button.

    grblgru - Awful busy display... the many colors scares me into that kiddie crayon look of default Mach3. While I can connect, I could not yet fully explore this gui simply because it seems to lock up after the first jog move. The verbose communication shows continued communication, but the Nano does not send any pulses to the drivers. Not sure what is up with that.

    chilipepper - I did have it connected on a windows installation, but it sure is not plain and simple as to how and where... So much so, that when I returned to it a second time, I had no clue how to get the connection actually made this second time. Sure.. there were "messages" telling me I was not connected, and to "simply pull down the connection from the 'menu'"... WHAT MENU ? WHERE MENU ?.... Oh, I will return to look at it, but frankly, the whole web based/but uses all web libraries leaves me less than tickled. I would never recommend it for anyone with priority or secure prototype work because there is no good way to really be secure in any SaaS environment with people you do not even know running it.

    tgFX interface - looked promising... but they bailed and pushed for chilipepper.

    Well, thats what I saw so far. I have more to explore, but I think what is left are ones that did not make an impression on me at their webpage or github page.

    But, Candle.... that is my favorite so far for ergonomics and layout, but it looks dead. Anyone with other grbl gui opinions out there ?

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    Chris L


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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    Just curious why someone who has experience with LinuxCNC would use word 'difficult' at all? I've partially working setup of MachineKit on RPI2 with software generated step/dir-pulses and it was like nightmare...

    Quote Originally Posted by datac View Post
    bCNC Interface...I could not for the life of me figure out what PORT I was supposed to use to connect with. I thought it might be a simple matter to install bCnc on a windows laptop where the PORT might be more obvious... But a windows install is rather painful, so I did not test it yet. Why do things need to be this difficult ?
    I'm using bCNC under Raspbian on RPI 2/3(also on Windows but that was long time ago), all avaiable ports are detected automaticaly on program startup, so it's simple as selecting it from drop down menu. You should check if your Nano was detected by the system and ttyUSBx devices were created, check dmesg. I've chinesium Nano and it's detected only if I replug it after system startup. I think when my router was running on UNO-clone everything was detected without any needless actions.



    bCNC is like only one who has working macro's for M06 tool change commands and [partially] working g-code editor, it's super handy when working on PCB's.

    ----------------

    chilipepper could be OK and useful for headless setups, but support for grbl interface is almost non-existent so if something happens you could count only on yourself.



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    I have been using Grbl for a few years now on a CNC milling machine. Actually, I have 2 setups running.

    What I can say about Grbl itself is that I am impressed considering what it runs on. I used to use a Chinese Nano clone, but found that the USB to serial converter chip they use (CH340) can at times result in errors with the G-code stream to Grbl. This is not a fault of Grbl, but specifically the CH340 chip. I have swiched over to an Arduino Uno clone making sure it is one that has the Atmel 16U2 USB to serial chip. The 16U2 has no problems at 115200 baud.

    As for the user interfaces available, I agree that most are lacking in one regard or another. I tend to do a lot of things on my mill using MDI, and needed a GUI that would read a canned cycle and convert it to linear moves that Grbl can understand. I wound up writing my own GUI, which incorporates things like tool changes, a tool table, canned drilling and boring cycles, probing routines, etc. Unfortunately, some things happening in my personal life have prevented me from updating the program to work with Grbl V1.1. As it is it only works with V0.9. I use an old Netbook as the host for my GUI and it works well. I decided to write another interface to do all this stuff and be V1.1 compatible, but have not had time to finish it. On my machines I am still using my V0.9 GUI with Grbl V0.9. Hopefully this winter things will slow down enough for me to finish the new one. Probably by that time there will be a new version of Grbl and I will have to start over again. My GUI doesn't have a graphical backplot, because I'm not that good of a programmer, but my background in CNC starts in the 1980's when I made a living running VMC's, and back then nothing had a backplot. I don't really miss having one.

    Overall I am very happy with the performance of Grbl. I have looked at the step signals using an oscilloscope and they are very good square waves. I have not had any issues in regard to Grbl controlling the machine. My machine is basic 3-axis with combined limit/home swiches and there are enough pins to handle this setup without issue.

    A few thing I would like to do this winter is to add spindle control and convert my rotary table for use as a 4th axis. Grbl does have PWM for spindle control and it would be nice to have this. I have a few projects that the 4th axis would be good for. In order to use the 4th axis with Grbl you need to use an Arduino Mega 2560 and a forked version of Grbl, but it is doable. Actually, one of the forked versions is 6-axis capable.



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    >>Just curious why someone who has experience with LinuxCNC would use word 'difficult' at all?

    I know, right ? I've managed numerous Linux servers for 15 years and my daily use laptop has been a linux mint machine for going on two years now. I should be able to figure this out.....

    The port is being established at ttyUSB0, but inserting that or any port for that matter in the bCNC drop down doesn't seem to work. I'll be getting back to it, it's just that during this test event, if things didn't just work quickly/easily, I moved to the next interface option. I have to say it is neat that you can just close one interface and jump right into another.


    >> I've partially working setup of MachineKit on RPI2 with software generated step/dir-pulses and it was like nightmare...

    MachineKit.... I've been to the web page, but it was not immediately clear as to what I was to do with what was there. When I simply searched for MachineKit images in google, I was at least able to see that the interface might look rather use able, so it is also on my list to come back to.

    Again, I am mostly doing this just for the learning experience. Every machine I currently deal with is Flashcut powered, although, I do wonder if down the road I could use something like your Raspberry PI methods as a stand alone, non-pc environment for my personal plasma cutter. It's just a small basic gantry that does not need THC or any other extras..... If it was a stand alone deal, I could just roll it out (it's a portable), plug it in and run it from my phone or something. ANy PC in that environment gets covered in metal dust very quickly.

    Chris L


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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    Quote Originally Posted by 109jb View Post
    I used to use a Chinese Nano clone, but found that the USB to serial converter chip they use (CH340) can at times result in errors with the G-code stream to Grbl. This is not a fault of Grbl, but specifically the CH340 chip. I have swiched over to an Arduino Uno clone making sure it is one that has the Atmel 16U2 USB to serial chip. The 16U2 has no problems at 115200 baud.
    Good point, thank you!



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    On my latest project. I'm using 10 inch touch screen, GRBL,RaspberryPI and a protoneer hat. Makes for a compact package.

    Protoneer has a configured image with bcnc and UGS. Makes it an easy install and configure.

    Candle is also my favorite GUI. wish it was on the Protoneer image.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/Ba0McEnn...ken-by=boz_cnc



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    >> Candle is also my favorite GUI. wish it was on the Protoneer image.

    Do you have any idea if and where any Candle discussion has taken place ? A nice interface and I'm not finding any real discussion about it.

    Chris L


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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    Candle is one of those hidden gems. Git hub is the only place that i know of. There is a thread on putting candle on a raspberrypi but is beyond my abilities.



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    I only had a few minutes to play with bCNC today as I worked on a different Arduino project. I found that I AM connecting to the Nano, but the big display above claims I am not connected.

    Lucky me, I see others have had this same issue and there are various forum posts out there with things to try... of which, I hope to do tomorrow.

    I also peered into the main screen source files for Candle. I hope to find where I might be able to change the direction of motion when the plus direction jog buttons are pressed.

    Chris L


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    Default Andriod UI

    I just finished my DIY CNC router and have been using bCNC and UGS on Linux Mint. A few days ago I stumbled apon an open source Andriod app called "Grbl Controller" (available on the Play Store). I gotta say, I love it! I run the app on a didicated old Galaxy S4 and leave it in the shop. Anyone else tried this app ?

    what I like :

    1. ablility to run a job on the machine withhout waiting for the PC to boot up
    2. not having to use a keyboard or mouse ; just a simple touch screen
    3. small form factor in the shop
    4. interface is exactly what you need and nothing you dont (jogging, homing, alert reset, custom buttons, terminal access, run job file, real time status)
    5. supports grbl 1.1 status updates and jogging commands


    Git Hub link :
    https://github.com/zeevy/grblcontroller/wiki/Interface-Documentation






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    Default Re: Andriod UI

    Quote Originally Posted by junior2016 View Post
    ..."Grbl Controller" (available on the Play Store)...
    Anyone else tried this app ?
    [/COLOR]
    That app requires the use of some sort of BlueTooth device to connect to the machine's control card, does it not?

    As unreliable as BlueTooth seems to be around my place, I'm not sure I want an unwired connection between my machine and me. It'd suck pretty badly if I needed to do a panic stop when bluetooth happened to be in one of its recalcitrant moments.



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    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    While this is a bit of a revived dead thread, I though it worthwhile to mention another GCoder sender.

    But first, as I'm sure many know, the Grbl Panel developer stopped supporting it about a year ago. For fans of Grbl Panel (like me), that was quite unfortunate. But a new sender has taken the place of GP - ioSender (AKA GrblHAL GCode Sender).

    Even though it is associated with grblHAL, it works quite well with "Grbl Classic". It is very similar in many ways to Grbl Panel but goes well beyond. It has a clean user interface. The 3D display updates in real time and is quite in sync with the actual spindle. It supports numerous connection methods - USB, Ethernet, Wifi and BT (if the Grbl Board supports it). Changing Grbl Settings is easy with all the bit fields broken out as check boxes and copious help info. The probing section is an order of magnitude better than any other GCoder out there. It has tool height support, edge and height finding, inside and outside center finders and height map probing. The height map probing also allows transformation of the loaded GCode program. Great for shallow etching of PCBs. Works for uneven surfaces in general.



  13. #13

    Default Re: A few days with GRBL

    Quote Originally Posted by philba View Post
    While this is a bit of a revived dead thread, I though it worthwhile to mention another GCoder sender.

    But first, as I'm sure many know, the Grbl Panel developer stopped supporting it about a year ago. For fans of Grbl Panel (like me), that was quite unfortunate. But a new sender has taken the place of GP - ioSender (AKA GrblHAL GCode Sender).

    Even though it is associated with grblHAL, it works quite well with "Grbl Classic". It is very similar in many ways to Grbl Panel but goes well beyond. It has a clean user interface. The 3D display updates in real time and is quite in sync with the actual spindle. It supports numerous connection methods - USB, Ethernet, Wifi and BT (if the Grbl Board supports it). Changing Grbl Settings is easy with all the bit fields broken out as check boxes and copious help info. The probing section is an order of magnitude better than any other GCoder out there. It has tool height support, edge and height finding, inside and outside center finders and height map probing. The height map probing also allows transformation of the loaded GCode program. Great for shallow etching of PCBs. Works for uneven surfaces in general.
    Iosender is indeed terrific. My only issue is that it’s built on libraries & languages only available on Windows but I use Linux in my shop…



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