Status: June-03

[Drew Fustini]

BeagleBone White (aka Orig):

I found the BeagleBone LinuxCNC starter kit: "ready-to-run SD card image":

http://beagleboard.org/project/LinuxCNC/

An 4GB size SD card image for the BeagleBone board, which contains:

- Debian Wheezy

- the Xenomai 3.2.21 kernel with Xenomai 3.6 support in-kernel

- the Xenomai 2.6 runtime support installed (master)

- all prerequisite packages for LinuxCNC installed

- two LinuxCNC development branches installed ready to run:

      arm335x-hal-pru-module-emcweb  (v2.5_branch - based)

      arm335x-hal-pru-module-emcweb-master (master-based)

      both branches track git://git.mah.priv.at/emc2-dev.git

The discussion is here:

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.emc.user/43339

I downloaded the image and flashed the image onto uSD:

http://static.mah.priv.at/public/beaglebone/starterkit/beaglebone_sd4GB.img

However, my orig white Bone won't boot with it.  I don't get any console messages either.   I need to contact the creator for suggestion.  Or I can try to just untar the archives onto an already partitioned card.

BeagleBone Black (BBB):

So it's good news that there was far amount of progress made on the orig Bone with the 3.2 kernel.  It does require kernel patches for realtime functionality.  So I believe that will be the largest challenge for BBB (BeagleBone Black) as it runs 3.8 kernel.

I posted to the BeagleBoard google group for advice:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/beagleboard/ck4J3tl_GMs

Eric Keller wrote: "There is work to be done on the real time kernel at this point."

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/beagleboard/ck4J3tl_GMs/QsudIiQCrHgJ

cheers,

drew

[Drew Fustini]

Essentially, the SD card image (with 3.2 kernel) for LinuxCNC on original Bone didn't boot.  Not sure why.  But it seems others have been successful.

This does confirm though that folks have gotten LinuxCNC/EMC2 compiled and running on ARM.  It does require real-time patches for the kernel which is why the SD card image was nice idea.

For the BeagleBone Black, it's running the 3.8 kernel so response I got is that the biggest challenge will be applying those real-time patches to the newer kernel version.  I'm not certain how easy or difficult that would be.  I need to dig into the mailing list threads more and post questions.

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[Drew Fustini]

Hi - Jay, Ed, Andrew Kilkenny (Ste co-worker) & Ste chatted last night after NERP.

My concern from research was that while EMC2 runs on BBone White with 3.2 kernel, it does not yet work with BBB and 3.8 kernel.  The real-time patchsets that EMC2 requires must be applied to 3.8 kernel.  This isn't something I have skill-set to do.  So it seem it is a waiting game for some kernel hackers to get BBB 3.8 kernel working with real-time patches for EMC2.

However, after the meeting last night, I realized this isn't a show stopper since we can use the PRU to generate the stepper signals.  This is also an interesting demo of the BBB's capabilities.  I believe once we have the PRU assembly code working and an appropriate Linux userland interface to it (like C program, Python module or node.js library), then we probably could hook up EMC2 without worrying about the real-time Linux kernel patches (since PRU is handling the real-time burden).

So I'm going to get back on the PRU path and try to run some existing examples just to get familiar with the toolchain and process for it on BBB.  We'll need to develop our logic for what the PRU will handle and how userland code will interface (the basic mechanism is a memory-mapped buffer).

element14 gave PS:1 a BBB for this challenge.  Jay didn't have one yet so he took it last night.  Ed & me both have BBBs.  I also have a pre-production unit if someone really needs one.  You have to either short two of the serial pins or keep FTDI cable connected (it was before a pull-up resistor was added to keep UART pins from floating).

On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Shawn Blaszak <sbla...@gmail.com> wrote:

Actually, I've been meaning to ask about this as I haven't seen a clear discussion regarding this.  Are we still looking to do the LinuxCNC/stepper driver thing on the BB?  The thread Drew pointed out seemed to be exactly what I thought we discussed doing but already well underway by the LinuxCNC community already.  I kind of assumed that scuttled our plans and we'd need to come up with something else but haven't noticed any more discussion on it.  Is the plan now to focus more on the pick-and-place aspect?

-Shawn

On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Ed Bennett <e...@kineticsandelectronics.com> wrote:

Either way, a controller for the Pick n Place doesn't really care how it's clock is derived.

On 06/03/2013 03:57 PM, Ed Bennett wrote:

I thought we were pursuing a different goal -- using the PRU

On 06/03/2013 02:27 PM, Drew Fustini wrote:

Essentially, the SD card image (with 3.2 kernel) for LinuxCNC on original
Bone didn't boot.  Not sure why.  But it seems others have been
successful.

This does confirm though that folks have gotten LinuxCNC/EMC2 compiled
and
running on ARM.  It does require real-time patches for the kernel
which is
why the SD card image was nice idea.

For the BeagleBone Black, it's running the 3.8 kernel so response I
got is
that the biggest challenge will be applying those real-time patches to
the
newer kernel version.  I'm not certain how easy or difficult that
would be.
  I need to dig into the mailing list threads more and post questions.




On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 1:03 PM, Drew Fustini <pdp7...@gmail.com> wrote:

*BeagleBone White (aka Orig):*

I found the BeagleBone LinuxCNC starter kit: "ready-to-run SD card
image":
http://beagleboard.org/project/LinuxCNC/

An 4GB size SD card image for the BeagleBone board, which contains:

- Debian Wheezy

- the Xenomai 3.2.21 kernel with Xenomai 3.6 support in-kernel

- the Xenomai 2.6 runtime support installed (master)

- all prerequisite packages for LinuxCNC installed

- two LinuxCNC development branches installed ready to run:

       arm335x-hal-pru-module-emcweb  (v2.5_branch - based)

       arm335x-hal-pru-module-emcweb-master (master-based)

       both branches track git://git.mah.priv.at/emc2-dev.git


The discussion is here:
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.distributions.emc.user/43339

I downloaded the image and flashed the image onto uSD:
http://static.mah.priv.at/public/beaglebone/starterkit/beaglebone_sd4GB.img


However, my orig white Bone won't boot with it.  I don't get any console
messages either.   I need to contact the creator for suggestion.  Or
I can
try to just untar the archives onto an already partitioned card.

*BeagleBone Black (BBB):*

So it's good news that there was far amount of progress made on the orig
Bone with the 3.2 kernel.  It does require kernel patches for realtime
functionality.  So I believe that will be the largest challenge for BBB
(BeagleBone Black) as it runs 3.8 kernel.

I posted to the BeagleBoard google group for advice:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/beagleboard/ck4J3tl_GMs


Eric Keller wrote: "There is work to be done on the real time kernel at
this point."
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/beagleboard/ck4J3tl_GMs/QsudIiQCrHgJ


cheers,
drew

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