Jackpot possible remix for adding additional ESP32 for WLED?

“I got the lights to follow the X, Y, Z position. You can also customize the lights to show the % progress.”

– 6PM Ryan

3 Likes

This is pretty much what I’m hoping for as well.

This part is possible with marlin on the skr lol. I never got it to work but also never really tried

3 Likes

Slicers add a % done code to the gcode. We would need Cam to do the same…then we could edit it to do fun stuff.

3 Likes

I wonder if that will be a possibility with MillMage

That is the last of my concerns with that one. I just want it to perform well.

And honestly I would not know how to feed in 99 differnt states of progress to Wled anyway other than a analog potentiometer, so a DAC pin might work with PWM…but no idea.

1 Like

Agreed. Just made me wonder since we were on the subject. I don’t use that on my 3D printer even though I know it can do it lol

1 Like

Looks like we could use the status outputs as the buttons for WLED.

http://wiki.fluidnc.com/en/config/status_outputs

Kind of want to get a Jackpot to play along, but don’t really want to take apart my working LR3 lol

3 Likes

Yup that takes care of the errors, the rest would just be added to the Gcode, start, end , tool change, and a default boot state.

1 Like

Just build another :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

3 Likes

It technically could. But I don’t know how to make FluidNC post to the rest api based on state or in response to a gcode command. That would be a decent software change and it could have significant impacts on the network. The esp is not a pi4.

The opposite is true too. WLED could connect to a socket on FluidNC and ask for state. But I don’t know if Fluid has a simple api for that. And I don’t think wled can support that with its software.

It’s all open source. But the network stuff can bite you in non-obvious ways.

The main reason that would be cool is to have the lights on my zen desk follow the ball. I can think of a few ways to do it. But nothing that isn’t risky or time consuming. Maybe we will figure iut a hack at some point. The sisyphus table does that, but it runs a whole pi and has a custom gcode parser.

3 Likes

You’re talking about MOSFETs (Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors or just FETs for short) and BJTs (Bipolar Junction Transistors, usually what someone means if they just say ‘transistor’ or in older terms like ‘transistor radio’). Both are types of transistor but work in different ways.

The super-basic response is that BJTs are an older tech and are current-driven current-controllers. The current flowing through the load terminals depends on how much current is flowing into the base. They work well in the ‘linear’ mode where they’re partially on and are being used to amplify analog signals. They don’t work as well when currents/voltages start to get bigger and they aren’t as efficient when fully turned on.

A MOSFET is basically just a voltage controlled resistor. Applying voltage to the gate relative to the source will cause the resistance between drain and source to drop. These are where most of technological advances are being made now and have largely superseded BJTs in all but a few situations. Most FETs don’t really work well in the linear mode and tend to do best when switched on/off completely, but they can do that very quickly and very efficiently.

If you see someone talking about a ‘class A’ or ‘class AB’ audio amplifier, they’re talking about BJTs. The signal is applied to the base at low voltage/current and then the transistor lets higher current through from a higher voltage supply to act as an amplifier. On the other hand, if you get a ‘class D’ or ‘switching’ amplifier, that’s taking the audio signal, converting it into PWM and then switching a higher voltage/current supply using the FET to create the amplified signal, then filtering out all the ‘leftover’ higher frequencies that this causes, leaving just the original, amplified signal.

Both BJTs and FETs can be used to create logic chips but nowadays almost everything is FET based logic. You’ll see that referred to in older devices as CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) vs TTL (transistor-transistor logic).

That’s a 30 second overview of it and it’s obviously wildly simplified for a topic that makes for an easy PhD thesis level discussion. There are also all sorts of fun distinctions and categories within those devices like NPN/PNP transistors, N-channel and P-channel FETs, enhancement vs depletion mode FETs, JFETs, IGBTs (a BJT that gets controlled like a MOSFET), different materials like silicon carbide, gallium nitride, even different construction techniques like planar vs trench FETs, combinational devices like cascode FETs (a couple of different types of MOSFET in a single package to try get the best parts of a JFET and MOSFET) etc. etc.

5 Likes

Thanks for the learning. At least I got the end use kinda right, they can both turn things on and off. I have used both for LED’s at least.

2 Likes

Painfully bite too not some playful puppie nibbles. Like Chihuahua chasing the mailman bite. It’s be really cool and useful if anyone has the knowledge and time

Edit: sorry for the rant. May or may not be currently dealing with a network based issue at work. And may or may not have experienced lots of network issues in the past

Wow, thank you! I’m amazed.

2 Likes

I thought about that. My thinking is you’d probably have to limit the API calls to events that happened before/after the actual cut, or at the end of each pass. Times when the machine isn’t really doing anything and the ESP32 would have some time to send the call. I definitely wouldn’t try to send API calls while it was in the middle of a cut as that could throw off the gcode timing.

2 Likes

My main goal is to hopefully make something “dead simple” easy for makers to implement. Because the whole prospect can be intimidating. “I’m a little intimidated.” LOL

2 Likes

We live in a plug and play world. It is both a blessing and a curse. I 100% agree with your image

1 Like

Means a lot of work went into it to make it that way.

3 Likes

Okay so I just finished it up. I took a little video of it. Full control over the WLED. I made three new macros for each state of the “button” port. Those codes can easily be inserted into your Gcode, start, end, tool change. I will try to upload the video later, still have some things to do in the shop.

5 Likes

I was just thinking about how to wire this up and figure out the code. Really looking forward to seeing how you did it!

3 Likes