Updating to latest Raspian and Laserweb4

[GeoffS]

Our maker group (Hobart Makers) has a K40 laser cutter running a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a Pi Hat version 2.51 (I think, it has a separate nano on it).. It's currently running Laserweb 3 and I've won the job of updating it to Laserweb 4.
As the current image (V4) is a a bit old, I've started with a clean install of Buster and I've run modified version of the Protoneer script (no bCNC, Chilipepper, etc) to install necessary software. So far, it all seems to work in so far as Laserweb4 starts and the serial port has no getty, console etc.
I was going to test the Pi I have with an old CNC shield and UNO but no level shifter so it will have to wait until Sunday when I have access to the laser (it's 60km away)

No changes were needed to the scripts except to exclude things I didn't want to install and to comment out some scripts that setup tries to run, but don't exist. I did find a minor problem with the setup of arduino software in that avrdude-autoreset referred to version 1.8.5 but the version installed is now 1.8.10.

Fingers crossed.

[Bertus Kruger]

Our maker group (Hobart Makers) has a K40 laser cutter running a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a Pi Hat version 2.51 (I think, it has a separate nano on it).. It's currently running Laserweb 3 and I've won the job of updating it to Laserweb 4.
As the current image (V4) is a a bit old, I've started with a clean install of Buster and I've run modified version of the Protoneer script (no bCNC, Chilipepper, etc) to install necessary software. So far, it all seems to work in so far as Laserweb4 starts and the serial port has no getty, console etc.
I was going to test the Pi I have with an old CNC shield and UNO but no level shifter so it will have to wait until Sunday when I have access to the laser (it's 60km away)

No changes were needed to the scripts except to exclude things I didn't want to install and to comment out some scripts that setup tries to run, but don't exist. I did find a minor problem with the setup of arduino software in that avrdude-autoreset referred to version 1.8.5 but the version installed is now 1.8.10.

Fingers crossed.

Regards
Geoff

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your update and effort. I have been planning to get the V5 image out for a long time but was struggling with LaserWeb. If you have any install scripts of tips for Getting laser web going that would be much appreciated. (Thanks for logging your issue in Github)

[GeoffS]

Hi Bertus,

Most of the changes to the script were due to the fact that the required versions of npm, node etc. are available a in the Debian repositories.
I want to run the latest script on a clean install of Buster and if it's OK, I'll send it to you. I won't have access to a Pi hat based install until I visit the maker space tomorrow.
Still having trouble getting laserweb to talk to the UNO/CNC shield I do have available. As far as I can tell, it should work if I connect RX/TX between the Pi and the shield (suitable level shifted). I can minicom into grbl on the shield but laserweb4 gives an 'error 9'. More work on that today.

[GeoffS]

No matter what I do, I cant get grbl to respond with it's greeting message when laserweb4 connects. With minicom, it's fine
The only way I can get a response is if I reset the Arduino while laserweb is waiting for its greeting..

(I should point out that this is with a CNC shield connected to a Pi, no a Pi aHat. I did give this a try on the Pi hat earlier this evening at the maker space but same result.)

Runnings out of ideas.

EDIT: Success! I had created the .env file containing RESET_ON_CONNECT=1 as mentioned on the laserweb github but it seems that .env isn't being read. If I edit config.js and change the line:

Code: Select all

config.resetOnConnect = process.env.RESET_ON_CONNECT || 0;

to

Code: Select all

config.resetOnConnect = process.env.RESET_ON_CONNECT || 1;

I get the expected grbl firmware greeting.
As it's a 120 km round tript to get at the laser cutter, it might be a while before I can test this on a proper Pi Hat.