Topics

1

SmartBOB controllers and dedicated accessories / 411 Issues and firmware weirdness

« on: June 24, 2016, 10:19:07 AM »

Have been getting some really weird behavior the last few days from my 411. Seemed to run fine for the last few months, so not sure what has changed. Losing communications in the middle of large jobs with errors like "internal Device Error 110" and the normal "Cannot communicate with device".

Then this morning after trying to recover a really important job that it died on last night, I got some crazy firmware behavior. When launching Mach it prompted me to update the firmware. I didn't catch the version numbers it listed. After upgrading it, the machine was completely unusable. I would cycle start a job, the spindle would fire up for about 2 seconds, then Mach would display "Invalid or unknown PMDX-SmartBOB-USB device found". After launching Mach again, the firmware box came back up and said the current version was 0.48.165 and the available version was 0.45.155. This didn't make much sense to me having the version number go backwards.

After that second firmware update (backdate), I could run the machine again. Although 15 minutes into the job, it then lost communications again.

-Adam

2

SmartBOB controllers and dedicated accessories / Weird E-stop Behavior With PMDX-411

« on: March 11, 2016, 03:17:06 PM »

Having some behavior with the e-stop that is abnormal.

If Mach4 is enabled and I press the e-stop, M4 recognizes it and disables. After a second or two (with e-stop still depressed), M4 reads "E-stop cleared". This is confirmed by on the diagnostic screen which does not show the e-stop active.

The second odd scenario is if the e-stop is depressed before powering on the system, both the PMDX-126 and M4 do not see the e-stop triggered.

System Information:
PMDX-411 connected to PMDX-126. (Normally a G540 is connected to the 126 but I disconnected to simplify the troubleshooting)
Mach4 4.2.0.2914 Build 2914 running on XP x86
External E-stop switch is only connected to the PMDX-126.
Input E-stop signal is enabled to the SmartBOBUSB on port 10 with "X" in Active Low.

Thanks-

Adam

3

Parallel Port breakout boards, motherboards, and dedicated accessories / Charge Pump to G540 from PMDX-126 with PMDX-411

« on: March 10, 2016, 10:42:17 AM »

I have a question on getting the charge pump to work with my setup. Here are the details on what I have:

PMDX-411 hooked to PMDX-126

G540 being ran off of the J19 connector on the PMDX-126.

I'm not sure the correct way to set this up. I have tried a couple different ways without luck. The PMDX-126 is expecting the charge pump signal on PIN 17, but the G540 needs it on 16. I thought I could leave the PMDX-126 in normal mode and change the PIN to 16 in MACH4, but that did not get the charge pump signal to the G540.

Any ideas?

Thanks-

Adam