LinuxCNC-RIO - RealtimeIO for LinuxCNC based on FPGA (ICE40 / ECP5)

That is really cool, once I have my existing machine fully tested I intend to start playing around with all the extra stuff you've implemented. When you say several devices per bus, is that now as per the standard i2c protocol, so 128 devices ? I understand that lots of i2c devices only have a couple of address options so that doesn't help.

Has anyone worked with Rio and Colorlight 5A-75E?
Can I work with this board?

In my early days with RIO I bought one of the Colorlight 5A-75E. They work, but I believe they don't have any inputs and the ethernet port is not supported. I never followed up with it and switched to the Tang Nano 9k.

They require a lot of rework to get inputs. Swapping out chips, add jumpers, messing with power supply voltages, can be done but fiddly.

Best starting with one of the more common boards discussed on this thread.

Just keep this is mind that it may end up costing close to the cost of original Mesa board (less postage if you are outside the locality of a local supplier). Most of these projects turn out that way.

BTW Linuxcnc-RIO is a great project, well supported and actively developed.

epineh wrote:

That is really cool, once I have my existing machine fully tested I intend to start playing around with all the extra stuff you've implemented. When you say several devices per bus, is that now as per the standard i2c protocol, so 128 devices ? I understand that lots of i2c devices only have a couple of address options so that doesn't help.
 

if you have multiple devices that have the same address, you can still use multiple busses on different pins.

but there is also easy support for i2c multiplexer (PCA9548A/TCA9548A) now.



 

now, the i2c-bus is merge into the dev branch

many thanks to 'Schoch' , for the quadencoder(z) fixes and the much better rps/rpm calculations.

and many thanks to all other people that helps here, in github and in the discord chat.