Carbide Motion on a Raspberry Pi

Thank you for linking this. while it is too big for my application it did lead me to be able to find one that was not!

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This is really cool. I have a couple questions though. How do you get files from your PC to the raspberry pi and has anyone had any luck with touch screen?

There’s various methods depending on your level of tech savy.

Some options:

  • USB Flash Drives
  • Cloud Sync Services (Dropbox)
  • Shared folder on your network

I personally go with the latter option and have a hard drive hooked up to a spare PC running on my network creating a “Samba share”. My Windows PC mounts it as a network drive, and the Raspberry Pi mounts it at /home/pi/shared.

If you also use Windows, you could share the folder and then mount it on the Pi. Caveat is that it would only be accessible when your Windows PC is online.

Happy to help if you want to go that sorta path.

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so you said Dropbox. would something like google drive work and just have it synced to my laptop and raspberry pi

I don’t believe Google Drive has an official Linux client, so you’d probably have to look at something like: https://www.insynchq.com[0]. Not sure if their software works on ARM though.

You could also open Google drive in the browser on the Raspberry Pi and download the file that way, but it wouldn’t automatically “sync”.

edit: [0] looks like it does: (LINUX) Insync on Raspberry Pi | Insync Help Center but requires some setup.

I’ve been using a Raspad v3 touchscreen w/ my rPi 4 pretty successfully.

To send the file you have a couple of options:

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Did not know that was an option. I am going to have to try this out.

Does anyone have a video of using a touch screen. Would like to see how responsive it is and the work flow of uploading files.

If you install the image that was provided it has a share exposed that you can save your files too. That is what I am showing you in this video.

Here is the machine being set up.

Carbide Motion is very smooth, the responsiveness is good, but that is also due to the quality of the touchscreen.

This has been my setup for a good long while at this point, and it works like a champ. just do it. you won’t be sorry.

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thanks for such a fast response. That seems to work really well. What touch screen are you using and what raspberry pi are you using? Also could you use that same share exposed with a fusion360 gcode?

My setup is an RPI 3b connected to this screen on an arm:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S74MP36/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is connected to an XXL and runs like a dream.

I would suggest starting this thread from the very beginning. There is a tone of info and setups.

If you use the image fenrus then you can save to the gcode share from any program to the pi.

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thanks for your help. I guess it is a perfect day to buy some raspberry pi stuff since it is Pi day

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The Pi image @fenrus made puts a Windows file share on your network called gcode. From my main desktop I mounted this share as a Network Drive. Now I just save the gcode files from Carbide Create directly into that share.

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Just wanted to say thank you for whoever ported Motion to the Pi. I have a Pi 4 that I connected to my Nomad 883 in the garage. I have an old 1920x1080 monitor that I use along with a wireless keyboard/mouse. It’s so nice not having to have my laptop tethered to every run.

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I’m glad it worked out for you, thanks for the feedback.

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Has anyone had problems jogging? I have had my SO3 for a couple of years and it has worked fine using CM on my PC, but I recently purchased an RPi and downloaded CM on it and the jogging buttons don’t work. I can rapid to any of the 9 predetermined locations on the board (although the motors sound different), but when I try to jog, using either the touchscreen controls or keyboard arrows, the controller moves in weird directions. I originally had the SO3 connected via a USB3.0 jack but moved it to a USB2.0 jack and I get the same results

I’'m using the RPI4 USB 2.0 port and the following setup:
iPAD via vncViewer.
8bitdo game pad as a pendant

No issues jogging using the iPad or via the game pad.

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I only have jog issues when I mess up and crash the machine. Otherwise no issues at all.

The only issues I have had are related to wireless range on my handheld keyboard. When plugged into my RPI4, the receiver has about half the range when compared to the Windows PC. I just moved the pi closer to where I stand in front of the machine.

@robgrz
I have seen an issue now a couple times where my machine will pause for a second or so and then resume cutting when running CM on a RPI4. It doesn’t disconnect or lose position and everything appears to be fine after. It just gives me a momentary feeling of dismay thinking that it disconnected. Have you guys seen this in any of your testing? Has anyone else seen this?

For reference, I am running stock Raspberry Pi OS with I believe the latest version of CM for the pi. I will double check that when I get home.

Good morning everyone!
I came across this very interesting, and I just finished reading everything…the first thing to say is THANK YOU to all those who made the effort of creating this RPI porting. It is an awesome result, and I cannot wait to test it and replace my old, rusty, half-broken laptop I was using so far to control the Shapeoko…
This said, there are a couple of questions I have

  1. Should I use the “official” .deb installation file from Carbide, or the image linked by fenrus? What is the difference between the two?

  2. Is the GRBL program already installed in both cases, or I have to manually install it? If it is needed to install it, I was not able to find how to do this, can someone point me to the right direction?

  3. Is any specific touchscreen monitor (7’’ if I got it right) that have been already tested and confirmed to work correctly?

Thanks in advance for your help, I’ll order a RPI 4 and the screen as soon as I know which model to use.

  1. I used the .deb from Carbide 3D and it installed easily — @fenrus should be able to speak to the changes which he made
  2. Grbl is the firmware on the machine — Carbide Motion interacts with it, but it’s already installed
  3. There are some touch screens linked above — most of the testing/usage at Carbide 3D has been done w/ 10" screens — I got a Raspad v3 as linked above which worked perfectly (once I swapped out the fan for something reasonably quiet)
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