Success!
Why 3D print when you have a cnc! Made the enclosure out of a piece of mystery wood out of the scrap bin!
Probably cedar from the smell, stained it with some walnut stain+polyurethane-in-1 stuff. Color 16mm aluminum buttons off Amazon, $6 apiece so not super cheap. Nice though! Removeable 4 prong plug and 8 feet of shielded cable from Vetco electronics.
The last hurdle was the (“dreaded” as someone put it) N/C no connection status.
My issues:
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Forgot this block in config.yml! I just put in the uart2 definition as highlighted previously, but not the uart_channel2 block.
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The trimmed down JST connectors weren’t fully seated in the A and B ports.
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This highly important knowledge:
I had RX to RX. Oops. I did try swapping at first but my jst plugs weren’t fully seated yet.
I see a very occasional negative number pop up for machine location, so my wiring may be a little flaky (too long?) But functionally everything works great.
I prefer having this as a sidekick to the WebUI, as sometimes i had weird network issues in AP mode that required power cycling; once during a run I couldnt access the webui, which was not ideal.
I don’t love that the E-stop function on the pendant causes everything to come crashing down; glad I tested it! Need to investigate “door mode” which sounds more like what I want: stop movement and retract Z a bit.
I do love being able to “sneak up” on a jog location when setting a zero, with the buttons or dial, without accidentally fat fingering the webui touch screen interface jog thingy.