Hi,
Is there anywhere a technical document on the Shapeoko pro controller ? I’d like to control the Pro using an arduino. The arduino should send (and get) commands and info from the CNC using TX and RX pin (& hopefully TX and RX shapeoko side’s).
Actually, I am using an USB Host Shield but it sometimes skips some messages. I guess It would be easier to communicate via a dedicated pair of output pins from the CNC controler. Is it a feature already designed in the SP controller (and does it offers some pin for that ?)
Thank you for any idea.
Regards
G.
Hey gigi, the Carbide Motion machines communicate through USB. People have used various gcode senders (UGS, bCNC, etc.) besides Carbide Motion to interface, and in the past I used a couple with my Nomad. If there is a gcode sender that runs on Arduino you could use that.
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To be honest, I don’t think you’ll get much info like that. If you are set on running it this route, I’d be prepared to figure ~everything out from square 1.
Finding a gcode sender that’s already set up to run on arduino as suggested by Randy might be a better bet. There’s also ongoing discussion about a raspberry pi build that might be interesting for your use case.
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Thank you both for your answer 
I wrote an arduino GCode sender indeed. The uno R4 is sending GCode thru an USB Host shield to the CNC. I need to do that because I wanted some feedback from the CNC during duty, sending ‘?’ to the GRBL and parsing the result.
I could achieve the same with a PI I suppose. But a simple controler is ok.
The problem is in the USB Shield : practically, its only use to convert a serial stream to USB stream and then back to serial stream. The arduino inside the shapeoko is well able to output plain Serial and my uno is able to read plain serial : I have sometimes disconnection with USB I suppose I won’t have if I could let the two arduino exchange data thru UART (and GPIO pins).
I can’t find any information about the hardware controler inside the Shapeoko. This may be confidential (but it seems it is only a Arduino after all - or Carbide don’t want to let people tinkering with the controler - and I can understand that, it could be the hell for support).
Sometimes (this is the case for instance for 3D printer - PRUSA) the designers of the machine design a micro controler able to output / input directly a Serial Stream.
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The Carbide Motion board is running grbl 1.1h on an Atmel 328 chip. (This is confirmed at Nomad Carbide Motion Board - Carbide 3D because the Nomad board and Shapeoko board are basically alike…) grbl is grbl, of course you can configure it at compile time (as I learned while compiling it for my old Nomad 883 Classic+) but it is pretty fixed as to its capabilities.
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