Basic connection to gcode sender help

Software / Firmware Jackpot Board / FluidNC
1

I must be missing something simple.

I have built my mpcnc with the Jackpot CNC board. I have the V1 sourced SD card in the board. I have edited and uploaded a config.yaml file with the limits of my machine. Using my iPhone or my Mac, I can connect to the Jackpot AP and move the machine around using the web interface. Works great. Homes great.

Next, I made a gcode file of the crown in kiri:moto, followed the instructions on the V1 site. Works great! The gcode file is on my Mac and my PC for sending. I tried to upload it to the SD card over wifi, but keep getting “upload failed”.

Now I can’t figure out how to get the gcode running on the mpcnc.

I have lightburn on my mac. I tried to connect Lightburn via the AP wifi, and with a USB cable. Neither can see the Jackpot as a device. I made sure I had the latest drivers for serial devices. Still no joy. Lightburn works great on my TTS-55 laser cutter when connecting via USB, so I don’t think it is a driver issue.

I then tried Repetier Host on the mac. Same, could not make a connection via wifi or usb.

I then tried Repetier Host on Windows PC (which does not have wifi). Tried USB connection. No joy, can’t see the board. I’ve done plenty of serial work on this PC (including ESP32s), but still checked drivers. When I plug in the usb cable to the ESP32 and the PC, I don’t see the device in Device Manager.

I have a Raspberry Pi I can try next with cnc.js, but I figure I’m missing something obvious.

First question: Do I send gcode via wifi AP, or via USB? What I read on the V1 site seems to indicate wifi, but I tried both.

Second question: Can someone please tell me exactly what settings to use for connecting Repetier to the Jackpot via the method in question 1? I have used the settings on the V1 Repetier page, but no joy.

Thanks!

2

AFAIK your first step - upload to the sd card - was the right one. There’s probably a way to connect some of those other apps but I stopped trying once the forums confirmed that file upload over WiFi was the best method.

I would double check the SD card. Make sure it’s readable in a PC, comes up as fat32 (and not exfat, ntfs, or osx), maybe put a file on it and try to download just to see, etc. Some cards may have a physical write protect switch - make sure it’s not flipped. There is apparently a known issue that prevents cards of exactly 2GB from working, and anything over 64GB is probably exfat by default and needs to be reformatted to fat32.

There’s a bit more here : localfs | Wiki.js

Good luck and congrats - you’re in the home stretch!

3

On some networks this works, some it doesn’t, you can try STA mode as well…but for now it is always best to physically put it on the SD card to ensure the complete file transfers.

In the web gui, hit the play button on your Gcode file.

Lightburn works with the jackpot with a USB connection. Make sure the baud rate matches.

Use the web interface. Jackpot CNC Controller - V1 Engineering Documentation

4

Outstanding, that got me going!

One suggestion: if you put a screenshot of the SD Card file area (with a gcode file in it) from the Jackpot web interface in the new user documentation, it would have prevented my question. Right now I don’t see anything that says there will be a “play” button next to a file when you upload it, but it is immediately obvious in a screenshot. I was thinking the Go or Play button would in in the control section of the interface, rather than by the file. When I could not find one, I was thinking I needed an external gcode sender (which is listed as needed in the 4 part software section too).

Thanks!

1 Like
5

We are hopefully switching to the new V3 GUI soon and will put up all new pics ASAP.

Sorry for the confusion.

6

FWIW, I was having the dreaded “upload failed” today with a 500k gcode file, it kept crapping out around 25%. Decided to update the firmware from 3.7.12 to 3.7.16 (which ironically I did over WiFi just fine), and haven’t had any more issues, have uploaded a bunch of different files since and they’ve all gone through. I have been resetting the board after uploading and before cutting just in case though.