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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : CMM2 head scratcher
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| PhenixRising Guru  Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Had it for years but just powered up. It's the integrated model, not the one with the Waveshare board. So I get an error with established demo programs. It's a screen mode thing "9 is invalid (valid is 1 to 5)" Am I missing an option (I haven't set any)? Firmware is the latest release and also the latest beta from geoffg.net. No inc function for CMM2? I note also that PID wasn't included in the MATH update. Bloody "industrial grade" VGA touch monitor just died  |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
OK Hey Geoff, whatever I downloaded from geoffg.net is way out of date. Only just found V6 on another thread and things are looking better  |
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Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3279 |
Hmm, I don't have a newer official release from Peter. Perhaps you found his V6 beta version? Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Yeah, found it with a search. The puzzling thing though is that I tried the demo programs, mainly the spreadsheet one, which has a 2020 date and calls for Graphic Mode 9. The firmware that I had complained that only modes 1 to 5 were valid. All good with V6 and it has the INC function and MATH.PID CMM2 is very cool indeed 👍 |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7657 |
The CMM2 is lovely and deserves a lot more recognition. It was just very unlucky that the Great Chip Famine came along and halted its production, letting the little guys sneak in. Mind you, the PicoMite has become another brilliant device and is usually far better for embedded applications than the CMM2. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Oh sure, the Picomite is my #1 for control but I'm playing with the CMM2 as a HMI. The Picomites to be slaves. The 800 X 600 resolution with all those pages, has me excited.  |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Mick, So I understand that the CMM2 runs programs from the SD card. I might have this wrong but didn't you mention one time that a single program could be stored in the MCU and would boot without the SD card? |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 10110 |
The CMM2 runs the current program from flash but always edits and lists from SDcard. It autorun is set then it can be booted direct to the stored program From the manual |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Thanks Pete...but there must always be an SD Card present, right? Another question: Is there any way to kill the prompt for time & date so it won't grind to a halt when the battery is dead/not present? |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Anyone? Or is the CMM2 not worth bothering with? |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7657 |
I can't remember the details, but AFAIK you don't need the SD card in if you are using AUTORUN as the program will run from flash. However, it's pointless stopping it as it can't be edited. Also, if you hit a fatal error you'll get the error message and that's it. I haven't used my CMM2 for a while and I haven't got the latest firmware on it so I can't test. The RTC has to be running IIRC. I can't remember what happens if there is no battery as I've never attempted to run it like that. :) You should have the RTC when editing though as it's very handy to have your saves time-stamped. Also, VAR SAVE uses RAM powered by the same battery rather than flash. It has unlimited write cycles and you get a whole 4K. Yes, the CMM2 *is* worth bothering with. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Thanks Mick, Just trying to understand this system. Having no luck with the SD card unplugged 😐 |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Duplicate Edited 2025-05-13 10:45 by PhenixRising |
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| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 4945 |
Yes, they do that after so many years of service. Was it one of those 19" 1280x1024(5:4) with serial touch ? One of our customers has been redesigning their stuff because they cannot get them anymore for several years. Volhout Edited 2025-05-13 17:40 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Ummm, boy do I have a red face  Didn't follow the golden rule of checking the PSU The external 12V adapter died I have found a few touch monitors with serial. The one I have is the ELO-Touch. I have a lot of ~30 year-old DOS-based controls around the world that were fitted with MicroTouch capacitive touch monitors. The CRTs die and MicroTouch now only supply USB devices. I didn't like the original mouse-emulating driver and so I talked direct serial to them. This wasn't compatible with the ELO-TOUCH and so I got one to modify the old DOS code. Makes me smile, actually because in the early nineties, I got reamed for having the audacity to use a PC-clone for a machine control but the only failures have been the CRTs. Fast-forward to today and I'm replacing 10-15 year-old dead Siemens and Allen Bradley hardware with dirt-cheap MCUs. I was on a Compuserve board (1993) discussing the PC-based controller and up-pops The Father Of The PLC (also the creator of ModBus) who proceeded to call me every name under the sun; "Industry needs Mack trucks, not Ferraris". I blasted him back because I actually quit a job because of the godawful Gould Modicon PLC. Yeah, Mr. Morley, take a look at the plant-floor today because there are Windows-based controllers everywhere from every big-name brand |
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| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 7657 |
He did have a point of sorts though. The early PLCs actively avoided being computers, they were glorified state machines. There was nothing to allow ladder rungs to be bypassed and only one program loop - the main one. That made them useless as computers but very, very solid as machine controllers. Microprocessors killed that concept in some ways. They added layers of complexity that, although flexibility was added the simple state machine had to be emulated rather than being part of the hardware. The first PLC I worked with was an old Merlin Gerin one, where the controller module was several boards of TTL, not a microprocessor in sight. That was closer to the PLC concept. Times move on... :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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| PhenixRising Guru Joined: 07/11/2023 Location: United KingdomPosts: 1247 |
Reminds me of our first CNC, boards and boards of TTL. Great for cooking hotdogs on the top |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2484 |
And now we have a dirt cheap microcontroller with a dozen hardware state machines as a bonus. |
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