Neat. The current going into the grbl board isn’t getting to the spindle, it’s just the current used by the motor driver boards, which would be higher when the machine is carving? That’s a clever solution. With Marlin/MPCNC/Low Rider, you could add in commands to flip a pin to your gcode, so that a particular pin could be high during some operation, or even during the whole carving, and you could just add the gcode to the start/stop/tool change gcode in your CAM software.
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M042.html
The remote just uses regular batteries, or are they special, and you’re charging them too? What are the details on that RF? I haven’t done anything like that, but amazon keeps recommending these: https://www.amazon.com/Makerfire-Arduino-NRF24L01-Wireless-Transceiver/dp/B00O9O868G/
I’m not sure if you saw the conversation at the bottom of the mrrf 2018 thread, but we’ve been talking about interacting with the CNC via gcode to enable a remote. My use case is more just so that I can bring the remote around with me during setup. I’d like to be able to bring it with me when I’m setting the Z height for the bit, or when I’m testing the size of the workpiece against the size of the gcode file. That kind of stuff would be nice.
I currently have a pi attached to my Low Rider (which is actually running grbl, ATM) and it’s running CNC.js to run my jobs, so I bring my laptop around with me when doing that now, but it’s not very light.
Barry had the collet rub on the workpiece, and it started smoking some, getting close to a flare up. So I decided to add an audible alarm in the garage. I was literally installing it while waiting for the CNC to finish when I smelt smoke, and I had done the exact same thing, driving my collet into the work and it was smoking/charring. The fire alarm didn’t care at all, and I wonder how big it would have to get before it did (I’m not going to test that). My low rider’s spoil board is enough fuel to catch the garage on fire, and there’s no way it’s stopping before it consumes my whole house. The alarm would be fast enough for us to escape, probably, but I just find something to do in the garage whenever it’s running. I’m not carving every day (or even every week) so it doesn’t bother me.