My old laser’s controller died, so I ordered a new one. This is a RDC8445S, as the 6445 was not available at a decent price at the time. While waiting for the new controller to be delivered I worked on another machine with a 6445. I tried the Lightburn bridge and found it very easy to work with, no cables running from my computer to the machine, very pleased.
After replacing the broken controller with the 8445 in my old machine I got everything working again on USB. So I thought I would just set the IP of the 8445 controller to the right address (10.0.3.3) plug the ethernet cable into the controller and go! Alas, this was not the case. Lightburn ‘sees’ the controller, but says “no laser connected”. I flashed a new image onto the device, set up everything from scratch but no luck. I can see the bridge, but Lightburn says no machine is connected. The other machine stiil works without a hitch when I connect the same pi to it.
When I ssh into the bridge, I see an app/script that says the bridge is connected and shows the IP address of the laser. Then, when I set up a new laser in Lightburn it also tells me a machine (my computer) is connecting to the bridge. Then the lasers IP disappears from the screen, Lightburn finds the bridge and says no laser is attached…
When I connect the controller to my home network with a (very long) ethernet cable and set the controller’s ethernet to DHCP it works fine, but of course then I would have to connect my computer to wired too because of the UDP problems the bridge was intended to solve. And a 20 meter cable going through my house is not an attractive solution ;). But at least I now know the ethernet port of the controller works.
Did I forget to set something when setting up the controller from scratch? Does the 8445 use a different protocol on its ethernet port? What can be the cause of ‘no laser connected’? I’m out of ideas…
From what I understand, the current releases of Lightburn are not compatible with the 8445 controller. The upcoming 2.1 release is suppose to be functional with it. Try the 2.1 release candidate.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for replying. You are fast!
I already tried the release candidate without success.
For as far as I understand anything about networking (not an expert by far), the bridge only translates the UDP protocol to TCP. So the only thing I can think of is that the 8445 uses a different protocol than the 6445. Maybe it does not use UDP at all? Who knows…
Not sure what the issue is, I just remembered seeing that post and found it for you. If you use the search button you might find a more in depth explanation of the issue.
Thanks, appreciate your help. I think I have read everything there is to find on the topic of the 8445 on this forum, even before buying it ;).
I have done some deeper digging and from what I found it seems that the 8445 has indeed changed its protocol from UDP to TCP/IP. So that clarifies why the bridge does not work. In fact, it is simply not needed anymore. Now I only have to find out how to use the onboard wifi on the 8445. Or how to connect the Ethernet cable directly from the laser to my computer. Setting up a different IP range for my ethernet port did not work, but maybe I did something wrong. Otherwise it is back to USB, but that means running a 7 meter cable along the walls from my computer to the laser. We’ll see…
OK, I do not know what I did wrong the last time I tried this, but now that I tried again I can connect the machine to WiFi, tell Lightburn its IP address and it simply works. That was a lot of time wasted because I apparently did something wrong the previous time(s). Of course it only works with the pre-release of 2.1, as the current version uses UDP in stead of TCP/IP.
So for this machine no more bridge, no more USB, no cables whatsoever. Happy!
I have ethernet and wifi working on the 85445s along with usb..
Using the candidate release 2.1 rc v9 of lightburn..
I decided to give it a crack a week ago.