Real life’s taken over somewhat, with three kids (one 6 months, one 3.5 years, one, my wife, 38 😉 I rarely get time to learn how to use the equipment to actually cut stuff.
During a rare couple of hours free time, I decided to play about with GRBL
I figured I’d explain how I finally managed to get it going on my Arduino Duemilanove, with my Clone CNC Shield V4
Of course, as always, practically, nothing’s been done, the shield is sitting on the arduino, doing its shieldy stuff, there’s no motors or power connected, just a string of stuff coming out of the serial port! (so, it probably works, right?)
FIRST – use GOOGLE CHROME (wasted an hour on that one, couldn’t connect to JSON server!)
SECOND – Download the pre-compiled HEX file – at the GRBL websit home page, scroll down a bit
Direct link – http://Grbl v0.9j Atmega328p 16mhz 115200baud with generic defaults (2015-07-17) (version 0.9J as of writing)
THIRD – Connect up your arduino and flash it with XLOADER – See instructions – HERE
Reset the Arduino
FOURTH – Download the JSON Serial server from Github – Home page Here
– unzip to somewhere nice (i’m on desktop!) and run the server, ensure to tick ‘allow firewall access
Note down which COM port your Arduino is connected to
FIFTH – Open up CHROME, type in http://localhost:8989
SIXTH – Type in the new window that appeared OPEN COM8 115200
(where COM8 is the com number of your serial / USB adaptor on the arduino)
Seventh – FIre up chillipeppr, Select GRBL
Voila, you’re talking, it all seems to automagically work!
Of course, there’ll be a way of automating / adding a command line prompt to the JSON thingy so you don’t have to web into localhost first…..small steps eh!
On my travels, also discovered that it’s not trivial to get TinyG2 running on the Arduino Due – with the CNCshieldV4 that I Have i’ve put that experiment off a little while
Next step, cutting stuff – ETA, 2016?
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