In order to integrate a homemade GRBL pendant for control of laser jog, set zero, goto zero, dim laser on, job start etc, I’ve tried 3 different scenarios which allow simultaneous connection of my grbl controller board to lightburn and pendant:
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“man-in-the-middle” - A simple Arduino Nano plus USB Host shield connects to the PC in the normal way and echos all serial traffic to and from the grbl controller. Manual grbl control codes are then injected into the stream but gated so that data can’t be injected if a job is running. This has been working reliably so far.
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“Virtual Com Ports” - A simple Arduino Nano transmits grbl control codes to the PC and using com0com / hub4com (open source software) a com port merge is set up so that the controller receives commands from both lightburn and the pendant but mediated by the PC. Also works reliably.
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“Joystick Control” - An AutoIT script is used on the PC to map gamepad input to arbitrary COM output and again merged with com0com / hub4com the same as above. Works just as well.
Request: Would it be possible to add to lightburn a custom raw USB HID component - either as a full bi-directional remote control or as a simple mapping to the console macros? Even better would be a merge of the HID codes to the main COM port so that any grbl codes could be generated and sent by a suitably programmed Arduino with USB HID capabilities. Using raw HID rather than standard keyboard input would prevent problems with active windows and other softwares grabbing the keyboard.
