Okay all is good you use each 5V output pin as a “switch” The transition from on to off is one state and off to on is the other. So you can easily do one effect at boot, and 4 other effects (without an add on card).
The other option is to use small mosfets or transistors I guess and then you can have three triggers per pin. Then it would be a button (best option for your card Doug). Then you could technically have 12 options.
The Vmot outputs switch the ground not the power. so we can use the Ground pin only from each Vmot output as a button. Those get three states each short push, long push, double push!!
Doug, this gives you some options if you do this to add the grounding mossfets for max functionality. (I bet there is a better option, maybe just an npn or pnp)?
Awesome!!! You are the man!! Now just have to learn how to make all that happen. Maybe in the next few days you can throw together a quick video on it. LOL
I am going to try and clean some things up, and add them to my build. Once I get something fairly clean I will take a bunch of pictures…maybe some moving pictures.
All this sounds amazing, and I literally cannot understand even 1% of it. I will need all the pics and vids I can get to try to understand. I mean I tried Googling what VMOT means, and the only explanation I found was a remote mention of thinking it means “motor voltage” and I am also trying to understand the reference to MOSFET. Apparently it controls how much electricity can flow, based on an amount of voltage applied to its gate? I’m in over my head.
Thanks! Ever since they contacted me, I’ve been trying to come up with a worthy idea that could make a meaningful contribution to the community.
Much appreciated! Making the videos and editing them is within my comfort zone, and is merely time consuming. Coming up with a PCB design is not within my comfort zone! I’m really stretching.
I have all the faith in the world that you can figure it out. We watched a group of guys go from concept to production on the jackpot in around a month. I’m sure an add on board will be a walk in the park for these guys! I wish I had followed along better on the jackpot thread but it was all over my head. I’m going to try to learn as much as I can from this build!!
I’m going to try and be the best help I can. I’m very self taught in a lot of things so some terms and whatnot are lost to me… (my brain also runs off different gas than most) and I haven’t done PCB design in a long time but I’m sure I’ll have some helpful insight as things get going.
Also don’t feel discouraged by it. PCB design is very overwhelming but it’s also very basic. I’m not sure how to best say it… it’s like drawing a line from point a to point b, which is super easy, but there’s 100’s of lines which makes it overwhelming. And just the base knowledge of when to use what (like switch gates, resistors, capacitors, etc) comes with time… and google
Yes kinda, there’s different applications. Best way I can think to describe MOSFET is it’s like an advanced switch. However unlike most switches it doesn’t physically remove the connection from point a to b. It instead puts a gate up and takes a lot of force (ohms) to get through. The more voltage applied to the gate the less force it takes for your main current to flow, you can change how much output there is. However it is mostly used as an advanced switch.
Those are pins labeled on the Jackpot board, basically just input voltage pins, same as whatever power supply is plugged in.
These are just basically tiny relays, or switches. Power to one side either turns the output on or off, very handy when you need a power wire to control ground or a different voltage than the input. (I am not exactly sure what the difference is as compared to a transistor, seem nearly the same to me).
I highly recommend playing with easyeda to get any sort of board design. Then when you are ready actually making a new one. There is a lot to learn the basics come pretty quick, after that the electronics is what actually takes a lot of staring and datasheets figuring out what goes to what.
First, I would try to make a prototype in a breadboard or a protoboard to get some testing of your design. Document it well and you can replicate that in easy eda. Your first version from pcbway will probably have some mistakes. But that is pretty normal. You can manually add wires or cut traces on the first version as a way to edit that first draft before fixing the design and sending a second version, then rinse and repeat.
In addition to just wiring up the extra ESP, you need to test that the software works the way you expect. That can be another big can of worms. It sounds like Ryan/Jonathan’s plan is to use the button inputs already coded in WLED and control them from gpio in FluidNC. So sending gcode to toggle an output up and down will look like a button press to WLED. You can break the problem down by:
Wiring up a WLED board with some buttons and configuring WLED to do something specific when you press a button. Just figuring out this part of the problem will be a big chunk of success. You’ll learn a lot.
You can also try connecting a multimeter to the gpio outputs in FluidNC and getting the voltage to toggle with gcode. Another huge portion done.
Then try wiring them together with man made jumpers (breadboard or protoboard is a good way to do this reliably). You can inspect the lines with your multimeter and you know what to expect from WLED, so you can debug the wiring easily.
Then document the wiring, put it in easyeda (maybe plop a copy here for review) and send a copy to pcbway.
When it gets here, you’ll know how to debug those pieces again and you can fix the first version before getting a new revision.
I would expect it is easy to be able to do something like “change the pattern at a certain time in the gcode”. That would be useful for turning the lights green when the machine is paused. I expect it would be hard to do something like, “make the pattern follow the X position of the router”. Because you don’t have a way to send a value to WLED, and WLED doesn’t have a way to take that number and use it for the pattern. That would be possible with software changes. But that is opening that can of worms.
Challenge Accept…wait, nope, not happening from me. That would be super cool but just nope.
Read the X postion, adjust every…nope.
I would like a Boot/waiting animation. Tool change waiting animation, done, parking, alarm/error. I am confident I can make all of those happen. nothing fancy though.
