5i25 - 7i76 support testers wanted

I have recently pushed a fix for using sserial I/O with openloop (servo) and tuning (stepper) tests.

Feedback (confirmation it works) welcome

Chris M

pushed it to 2.5 I'm not sure it it has been merged to master yet..

thats ok John. I am on holiday for two weeks starting Tuesday. So Test when is convenient.
Thanks

I am trying to setup a 5i25-7i76 with little success. My 5i25 is preloaded with the 7i76x2 firmware. I have LinuxCNC 2.5 and the lib/firmware/hm2/5i25 subdirectory with the 7i76x2.xml file dated 12/11/12. Pncconf allows me to select the 5i25 and the 7i76. I am not sure what the 'sanity check' checkboxes are about, so they are cleared.

I am just trying to get the combo to drive a Gecko 251X on the X-axis (step/dir 0). The Gecko is connected to pins 1,3 and 5 (GND, STEP0+, DIR0+) on the 7i76 TB2. The Gecko has an external 24V power supply.

I tried the cable 5V power. The LED by the 7i76 TB2 was lit. Nothing happens during the axis test in pncconf. Trying to jog in LinuxCNC immediately creates a joint 0 following error.

The Gecko 251X works fine on the internal parallel port using stepconf.

I changed the setup to external 5V power on pins 22 & 23 of the 7i76 TB3. 12V field power is applied to pins 4 & 8 of TB1 with W1 to the left. The LED by the 7i76 TB2 and TB1 are lit.

Pncconf is a little confusing for pin assignments. The user (me) is looking at the 7i76 with TB1 through TB6. TB1 is STEP/DIR0..3, TB3 is STEP/DIR4 - ENCODER - RS422, TB4 is SPINDLE, TB1 is FIELD POWER, TB5 is FIELD INPUTS 16..31 - FIELD OUTPUTS 8..15, TB6 is FIELD OUTPUTS 0..7 per the manual. Pncconf pin numbers appear to be relative to the connectors on the 5i25.

So I select the 5i25 board and the 7i76x2 firmware described as "7I76X2 is a configuration intended to work with the 7I76 five axis step/dir daughtercard. It will support two 7I76 daughtercards, one on each of the 5I25s I/O connectors. The configuration includes ten hardware step generators, two encoder inputs and four Smart Serial interfaces, a watchdog timer and GPIO." I only have one 7i76 with nothing connected to the internal P2 on the 5i25. It seems reasonable, based on the description, that I have five step generators (0..4), one encoder, two Smart Serial interfaces and general purpose IO (GPIO). Nothing is connected to the Smart Serial interface so I can ignore it at this time.

In Pncconf I selected 1 encoder, 0 pwm, 1 Smart Serial Port (Pins 16..19 on 7i76 TB3), 2 channels, 5 step generators, no Sanity Checks.

This gave me tabs I/O Connector 2, I/O Connector 3, Smart Serial 0, and Smart Serial 1. I don't know how these screens align with the TB1..TB6 on the 7i76. It appears I/O Connector 3 is the connector on the 5i25. It is set for X Axis StepGen, Y Axis StepGen, Z Axis StepGen and two unused StepGens. 1: is set for 7i76 Mode 0 I/O Card. 0: is set as Unused Encoder.

How do the Smart Serial subtabs map to the 7i76 I/O on TB5 & TB6?

I am not sure what to do next.

Stan

Looks like possibly a pncconf issue I think C. Morely is on vacation so I dont think he can help for a while.

Can you try running the sample hal config? (hm2-stepper)

You need to make some small changes in one of the .ini files or use this one as an example:

freeby.mesanet.com/5i25-7i76.ini


Note for debugging itd better to launch EMC/LinuxCNC from the command line

What directory are the hm2-stepper files in?

Found them usr\share\doc\emc2\examples\sample-configs\hm2=stepper

Making progress. The motor turns with the 5i25-7i76.ini file linked to above. I will compare that file to the file generated by pncconf and see what the differences are.

Thanks

I wish I had a useful post, but I don't have your answer. I have the same software (LinuxCNC 2.5) and hardware (5I25 and 7I76), but that CNC conversion project has been put on hold while I'm starting a larger project using the 5I25 and 7I77 and probably the 7164 as remote RS-422 I/O.

If I catch up to you I'll post something useful, but it's more likely that you'll fix your problem first and I'll learn from you.

I've found Peter at MESA Electronics to be very helpful on pre-sales stuff. Maybe he can install LinuxCNC 2.5 and help you fix your problem.