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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Stepper Project

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mozzie
Senior Member

Joined: 15/06/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 273
Posted: 08:14am 18 Apr 2026
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G'day Bryan,
Sounds like we are having a similar week, every 5 min job ends up becoming a marathon... Doesn't help when the ToDo list is a couple of toilet rolls long and ever growing  

As Phil says, the ON ERROR SKIP must be in the right place

' prog to test stepper functions

Option default integer

SetTick 200,Show_Pos

ON ERROR SKIP ' this will skip one error only on the next line
STEPPER CLOSE ' this will not cause an error due to the line above

Stepper init
Stepper axis x,gp0,gp1,,,200,400,50,5
Stepper axis y,gp2,gp3,,,400,600,100,5
Stepper position home
Stepper run
Stepper gc g1 x100 y80 f500
Stepper gc g0 x0 y0

etc etc...


This can also be achieved with
If peek(stepper active)>=0 Then Stepper Close


You may be able to connect the output of the PicoMite to the DM556, the input is a optocoupler with a 270R resistor in series. Hook up 3v3 and measure current, anything more than 2mA should be ok.



$134 a litre.... Highway robbery, and they wonder why we resort to "alternative arrangements"  

Happy to help mate, you have me thinking about automating the surface grinder here, another one day project

Regards, Lyle.
 
mozzie
Senior Member

Joined: 15/06/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 273
Posted: 08:27am 18 Apr 2026
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Bryan,
Once you have the stepper system initialized, the axis's set up and homed (or positions set) and STEPPER RUN is active, the system sits in the background and waits until you send G-Code.

Once the G-Code is in the buffer it will be executed in the background until the buffer empty's, it will then wait until more G-Code hits the buffer or STEPPER CLOSE / E-STOP happens.

Like I said, it took me a while to get my head around this as you can be sitting at the prompt in terminal and the system is still working on G-code or waiting for more.

Hope this helps.

Regards, Lyle.
 
Bryan1

Guru

Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1862
Posted: 09:06am 18 Apr 2026
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Phill I am using that big board Peter designed and my daughter did leave me a LCD so could could bring the HDMIUSB board up to my shed as it does have a HDMI port with a keyboard, mouse and the PS4 which no joy has been with that   d
Distonow did say he shipped with it with V6.00 on so it does need flashing for the latest update. My other option is just bring up the 32" screen as it does have audio in that just works so I could use that instead of the LCD.

I do need to order new dupont connectors but I do think that maybe an option so edits can be done in real time while I have the Bacoben top 500 going in the background which will make a change from JJJ.

Now with that text file I made of the X Y Z axis for doing the perf plate which is over 700 lines if calling them one by one from a file on B: drive would that overload the buffer.

So if we opened the cnc file off the SDCard we could read it line by line until the end of file but doing that is beyond the stepper code.

As there are over 400 2mm holes in this file that drills copper getting this to work is a new task, now I have got coffee in the shed which has gone down well Getting that 32" screen up to my shed is my best option so no need for a 5 metre cable to the board.

So now my task is setting up a 32" screen in my shed and making a mount for that TV screen so that HDMIUSB board can come up so what I can destroy it one day like my luck has been going it will go wrong


Regards Bryan
Edited 2026-04-18 19:17 by Bryan1
 
mozzie
Senior Member

Joined: 15/06/2020
Location: Australia
Posts: 273
Posted: 11:23am 18 Apr 2026
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Bryan,
The coil winder machine has a separate G-Code file for each coil type, these are read in by the main program and sent to the G-Code buffer one line at a time.

You can use Peek(Stepper Buffer) to see how much room is in the buffer and wait until room becomes available, should allow unlimited G-Code files  

Hopefully you get the HDMI unit working, being able to edit files and see error messages in real time will make life much easier.

Another problem: the STEP pulses from the PicoMite are around 1.5uS long and the DM556 expects a pulse of 2.5uS minimum, so even if 3.3V is enough to drive the input the pulse width may still be too short. You may need a pulse stretcher as well.

Regards, Lyle.
 
Bryan1

Guru

Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1862
Posted: 05:22am 20 Apr 2026
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So finally got around to bringing up my HDMIUSB board and TV to the shed and set it up, now as it had V6.00 on flashed it with the latest B5 beta so I could try the new FM file manager. Well just typing fm worked so the first job was too see if I could get a MP3 playing, well the screen did say it was playing so put the volume upto 100% yet still no sound. Also kept getting a message the RTC wasn't responding.

Next tried to connect via the com port only to find although the computer beeped in device manager only com3 was there so couldn't connect at all.

So reflashed with V6.02 and got com11 to connect to, now I did manage to get tera term installed and all showed was gobbly gook so as V6.02 doesn't have the FM I tried via MMEdit to install and just got this

Connected to COM11 at 19200
☼C:\Users\Bryan\Downloads\2025-07-27_193559_FM175\FM175.bas
Uploading using:  'target port\COM11:19200 s\picomite
Upload started
Not responding!


Now see that icon before C: it came up when it connected so don't know what that is.

One other thing in V6.02B5 with the RTC not responding the I2C was set after I did the OPTION platform HDMIUSB where in V6.02 I went to set the time only to find the I2C went an error saying it wasn't set.
Edited 2026-04-20 16:36 by Bryan1
 
Bryan1

Guru

Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1862
Posted: 06:57am 20 Apr 2026
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Now I did set the Audio to GP10, GP11', on Channel 5 as I found that setting on a forum post from a few months ago but what is the correct Audio setting.

Silly me didn't look at the V6.0 setup so in the woods here
 
matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 11214
Posted: 01:45pm 20 Apr 2026
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  Quote  but what is the correct Audio setting.

It should say how to configure the board on the silkscreen. Depending on which version it will be either:
OPTION RESET HDMIUSB
or
OPTION RESET HDMIUSBI2S
These commands do everything needed.

Note V6.02.02B8 just posted has increased the stepper pulse - try it - untested
 
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