Homing not working but E Stop In is ?

Hi all,

I'm just building my control panel for my CNC project. I'm a complete newbie to all this and I've come across a small problem.

I'm using an Arduino Mega as the "brain" of the machine. I want to be able to manually set the machine to "home" via 3 buttons on the control panel (X home, Y home, Z home).

I've got a generic Chinese Breakout Board.

Within StepConf I configured pin 11 to be "Home X".

When the Arduino detects the "X home" button pressed I send an output of 5V to the breakout board. But it doesn't seem to do anything?

I tried clicking the "invert" box in StepConf but still nothing.

I tried changing pin 11 to be "E Stop In" in StepConf and I can then see the Estop coming in and out on the LinuxCNC software when I press the "X home" button on my Control Panel.

I have set a position for x home of 100.0 in StepConf (the motors aren't connected to the machine at the moment as I've not yet built the machine so they can just turn forever without a problem).

If I go into the software and click "Home X" via the software then the X motor just keeps turning forever (i.e. way past the 100.0 setting). But putting either 5V or Gnd on Pin 11 doesn't mimic this behaviour?

Anyone know where I'm going wrong with this?

Thanks for any help you can give as I'm tearing my hair out (what's left of it). I realise it's hard to visualise my set up so if yoU want me to post pictures or more info then please ask.

Thanks

The parallel port I played with has active low inputs so it probably does not see the +5v signal from the Arduino. I would take the Arduino out of the equation for now and get the BOB to recognise signals on its inputs and once you understand how it works, introduce the Arduino and any supporting circuitry.

Thanks Rod

I did try taking the Arduino out of the equation and just shorting the Breakout Boards own 'ground' on to the input and that didn't have any effect.

So, then I thought that maybe the input was goosed but it works if I set it to be the "E Stop In" signal?

Strange one eh?

The home-X button won't do anything unless the machine is in homing mode.
You should see the machine turn off if you configure it for home + limit.

Or are you expecting that input to _cause_ the X-axis to home?

andypugh wrote: The home-X button won't do anything unless the machine is in homing mode.
You should see the machine turn off if you configure it for home + limit.

Or are you expecting that input to _cause_ the X-axis to home?

That's exactly what I was expecting? I expected the motor to do the same as if I'd chosen "Home" through the LinuxCNC software?

Is that not the case then?
How do I put the machine in "homing mode"?

Thanks for your help

You would need to connect that input pin to the HAL pin "halui.joint.0.home" but I do not know if stepconf knows how to do that.