You can run 3D printers over USB too, but you’ll note every printer you can buy now runs the gcode from local storage…
This isn’t a zero sum thing and none of us are the gcode police either. Try all the ways and if you like it and it works for you then go for it - yesterday I uploaded and ran files on the jackpot AND ran a job directly from lightburn - over WiFi - and it worked and the sky did not fall.
So long as you go in with your eyes open (or squinting if it’s near the laser ) and know over usb if your computer hiccups, or hangs or the cable tweaks you might wreck your job.
But then your cabling on the mpcnc could snag, or the bit hit a hold down clamp or a hundred other ways to ruin a workpiece you only find by trying.
OK, I’m going to let this thread return to its original poster’s intended discussion.
One last parting words of wisdom for you young folks. Enjoy the dexterity you have in your fingers now. Picking a single screw out of a tray of screws is dang near impossible for me now and if it’s any smaller than a 1/4 20 you can bet I’m going to drop it on the floor and it will disappear forever.
If you have UGS and the pendant connected at the same time, you should just avoid jogging or playing gcode files at the same time. I could imagine you running a job through UGS and messing it up if you played with the pendant at the same time.
IMHO, USB is a very good protocol and if you stay in spec, it works great. Longer USB cables are out of spec. But the bigger problem is the UART it gets converted to. There are no acks, and if a character gets lost, it can at least pause, at worst go off in a wild direction.
The gcode protocol doesn’t define a response and many firmwares have poor fault tolerance in gcode/uart. Enabling line numbers and checksums in gcode is a good start. But the responses don’t have any fault tolerance at all.
When I put the fluid dial to sleep the GPIO 2 and GPIO 16 green lights on the Jackpot flicker on and off. At least it dod once. The pendant was showing NC even though the Jackpot was on. Putting it to sleep and waking it revived it and it went into IDLE mode. There was a stream of messages in the grbl console when the Fluid Dial was sleeping and the green led’s on Gpio 2 and 16 were flickering. But upon waking it it was working perfectly.
I’ve ordered a new M5 Dial and new S3Stack and Fluid Dial wiring kit to make a second one and try to fix this one too. But since you’ve been involved with it’s development I thought I’s ask here if there is supposed to be GRBL messages and Jackpot activist when the Dial is in sleep mode.
My involvement with the development was very minor. It was on the graphics (UI look) side, and some testing feedback, and not the programming/coding side. I do know that in most FluidNC setups on the Jackpot, there is a “polling” interval and each time that time interval is reached, there is a readout shown in the WebUI console. If you’re seeing something other than that then I’m not enough of an expert to help on it. So sorry.
) and know over usb if your computer hiccups, or hangs or the cable tweaks you might wreck your job.