PathPilot on Novakon

[jips]

Ok, at least i got my copy of PathPilot yesterday, so now i have installed that and made the touch screen work, just have to wait for the cards now. I hope it was the correct one i ordered, right?

5I25 Superport FPGA based PCI Anything I/O card, 89$

i have this breakout board:

CNCdrive - motion controls

Yes it's the good card

[geidnert]

Ok, good, still having status Pending on the mesanet website. I placed the order 10/13/2015.

[brianbonedoc]

To anyone interested here is the bit file for the Novakon BOB (just remove the .txt )

[MBViklund]

To anyone interested here is the bit file for the Novakon BOB (just remove the .txt )

Thank you. Will probably be handy. I have recieved and installed the mesa card in the computer. But I have not had time to power it up and install pathpilot on it yet. I assume I will have plenty of problems once I do :-)

[MBViklund]

To anyone interested here is the bit file for the Novakon BOB (just remove the .txt )

So tonight I installed pathpilot on my computer. It starts up and the firmware for the mesa board also installs. I can also install the custom firmware just fine, but I do get an error message when I restart the computer. "Machine control software experienced an error" If I edit the ini file to the original mesa firmware again pathpilot launches just fine. Is there something wrong with the file you posted or am I doing something wrong? I do not have the mill connected to the computer yet.

[brianbonedoc]

MB - now the hard part begins.

What I do is not let PP boot on startup. I instead run it from the gnome desktop - you double click on the "operator_login" script in the operator folder. This runs PathPilot.

Click "run from terminal" and when it errors out DONT click anything. Just scroll back thru the terminal screen to see what error came up. It will say something like error on line 234 of xxx.hal.
That leads you to fix whatever error it throws. Most of the time I would just remark out using "#" in front of that line - assuming it seemed unimportant.

If you post the error screen I may be able to help.

[LeeWay]

Are you shutting down Path Pilot by hitting the Exit button?

[brianbonedoc]

Yes when I'm just running it normally. It doesn't seem to shutdown my computer though. When testing and setting it up (like now for my grizzly lathe) I just exit terminal and it shuts it dn

[LeeWay]

The way it works on the lathe is that you hit exit on screen, then in a bit a splash screen comes up and tells you that it is safe to power down the machine, meaning the main power on the lathe. That cuts it all off.

[brianbonedoc]

Got it. That seems to be how it's working for me. Still getting things dialed in - I seem to be getting errors trying to set up the tool table. Have to set up the encoder still.

[MBViklund]

MB - now the hard part begins.

What I do is not let PP boot on startup. I instead run it from the gnome desktop - you double click on the "operator_login" script in the operator folder. This runs PathPilot.

Click "run from terminal" and when it errors out DONT click anything. Just scroll back thru the terminal screen to see what error came up. It will say something like error on line 234 of xxx.hal.
That leads you to fix whatever error it throws. Most of the time I would just remark out using "#" in front of that line - assuming it seemed unimportant.

If you post the error screen I may be able to help.

I do not have a network connection on the linux computer yet. So I cant copy paste.

tormach_mill_5i25.hal:242: parameter or pin 'hm2 5i25.0.pwmgen.00.output-type' not found

(row 242 is under charge pump ) Code: setup hm2 5i25.0.pwmgen.00.output-type 1

This is all chinese to me right now. BTW, The computer is not connected to the BOB.

[PCW_MESA]

The error is not terribly surprising since the novakon firmware doesn't have any PWM hardware.
(reading the novakon.pin file will tell you what modules are included in the firmware
and the I/O pinout)

BTW if the included mesaflash is recent it can print out the installed firmwares module list / pinout:

sudo mesaflash --device 5i25 --readhmid

[brianbonedoc]

MB - obviously Peter beat me to the punch. If you are running the Pulsar you are more than welcome to use my INI and HAL files which are the only files you need to get up and running (besides the novakon firmware)

I'm at work but will try to get the files posted.

Also if you want a quick tutuorial: PathPilot on Non-Tormach Wikia - Wikia

[brianbonedoc]

OK here are my 3 files - this should get you going. Just delete the .txt from the end.

OH just saw the second file should be .hal NOT .ha

[MBViklund]

OK here are my 3 files - this should get you going. Just delete the .txt from the end.

OH just saw the second file should be .hal NOT .ha

Thankyou. I have read your wiki, it is very helpfull!

I used the files you attached and the program is running. Just had to rename the ini file for the mesa card to "novakon.ini". Since the pulsar and the torus pro uses the same BOB the program should in theory communicate with the mill when I connect it. But I do have the servo version of the mill so I assume I will have to set it up properly for that before I will get any movement. Then tweaking the accel and all other mill specific settings.

How to do that I hope I can sort out by reading the linuxcnc manual, google regular linuxcnc stuff and using their forum. And I will for sure ask you guys :-)

I really appreciate all help I am getting. There is alot of work you Brian already have done that I am getting for free. If/(When?) I get my torus pro servo up and running under pathpilot I will post my configaration files here as well.

[brianbonedoc]

MB - no problem. I am happy to help as much as I can - as others have helped me. PCW (aka Peter Wallace the Mesa guru) is probably the best resource around he is on cnczone as well as the linuxcnc forums.

I found that the hal and ini files were like the movie "The Matrix" if you stare at it long enough eventually all those characters make sense.

[geidnert]

Hi ppl, i now have some free days befor work starts again and i was trying out my copy of path pilot and mesa card, i now can start path pilot without any complaints but i cant get out of E-stop, any ideas about that? i have the following BOB

CNCdrive - motion controls

i have tried to get in touch with PCW_MESA but without success so far. the message i get in PathPilot is like this

"Failed to bring machine out of E-stop. Pleas check machine power or DB-25 communication cable from the controller to the machine."

Its a new bought Centronix-36 connector for standard LPT cable from the mesa to mu BOB so i doubt thats the problem, right?

/A

[LeeWay]

That could be an issue I think.
I haven't seen it discussed much, but I think it needs to be a DB25 pin cable. I may be wrong there, since they made the BOB to fit that cable. Just not sure if it is all direct pass through cable.
I think it is more of a BOB issue than a Mesa one.

[geidnert]

Yes i think its a bob issue aswell, if only PCW_Mesa could take a look, i now got passed the E-stop but now the limit switches are alerting, tried to dissable them for now but that crashed the pathpilot so i had to take them back again.

[PCW_MESA]

Yes i think its a bob issue aswell, if only PCW_Mesa could take a look, i now got passed the E-stop but now the limit switches are alerting, tried to dissable them for now but that crashed the pathpilot so i had to take them back again.

You are likely going to have to re-write the hal file to match your (the specific I/O pins and polarities used for limits etc)
plus select firmware thats close to a match for your BOB. To get everything to work, including the 12.5 KHz chargepump,
and analog out, will probably require a custom bitfile. I am pretty much booked up for the next week or so but can take a
look at this later this month (BTW the mx3660 config is pretty close)