I have recently converted my machine to Linuxcnc. So I thought i’d check if lightburn supported it. So once I had it installed I was then able to choose linuxcnc as a machine but the only comms options were serial or USB, which is weird considering most control cards are either hardware within in PC (parallel port) or ethernet.
Can ethernet be used? Is linuxcnc fully supported or is the machine profile just to be used as a “postprocessor”?
I’ve come to really enjoy using lightburn it’d be a shame to have to move on to something else.
@kazafog That actually appears to be an oversight on our part that it shows you the connection type at all. For LinuxCNC we basically only support exporting to a file which you then open in LinuxCNC. It shouldn’t show a connection type there at all. I will double check with the rest of the dev team and we will likely just update it to not show that page in the setup wizard. Just skip past it and don’t worry about the connection type. You’ll just be saving the files.
LinuxCNC is a combination distro and the software that runs on it.
it is definitely easier to run from the ISO or install one of the prebuilt ISOs but it can also be installed as an application. But it’s a bit more complicated than that because of the difference between consumer firmware and pro firmware. Most of the consumer CNC,Laser,3DP machines run firmware which does GCode decoding on the device which also requires GCode message buffering so the applications are what’s called GCode Senders. LinuxCNC differs in that it does the GCode decoding in the application and directly controls the hardware so there’s no stored messages between the PC and the machine firmware. When you yank the cable the machine stops whereas when you pull USB cable on a buffered firmware system it’ll continue until the list of GCode messages(buffer) is empty and then stop.
The buffered systems exist today because it was cheaper for the RepRap people to require an 8bit controller to run the 3DPs than an expensive PC and realtime controller to run the 3DP. Generally easier on the PC software side too. It’s been said that the trajectory planner on LinuxCNC is still something the buffered firmwares are yet to match.
The way lightburns machine setup is programmed made we think maybe they’d done a frontend or GUI. As there are numerous GUIs in linuxcnc already, why could lightburn not have built something similiar.?
adammhaile & DougL
That is what I expected you to say but I was hoping it was not the case.
Thanks very much for getting back to me. BTW my lightburn version is older 1.2 i think, not sure if it is still runs the same in the newer versions.
