I know that this has been beat to death but there’s no good answer yet and I wanted to see if anyone working on it has found a solution. My shapeoko is located a good bit away from my computer. So I need a good control strategy. Ive used a bunch of stuff. But the streamdeck is by far a perfect solution. But carbide motion has very poor keyboard shortcut support. (despite many posts saying the contrary.) When you really get into it the only thing it actually supports from a carbide motion standpoint is jogging… while useful… i want to be able to home my machine, initiate probing, start my spindle, and run the job. Has anyone discovered a way to get this done? Its so easy in theory and would essentially double my machines usefulness lol
Maybe others can suggest something if it exists specific to CM5, but maybe this would be what you want, it uses CNCjs instead of CM though:
The Streamdeck worked amazingly well back when it was possible to interface with the API in CM4:
Unfortunately, CM5 doesn’t offer that sort of remote access.
It should be able to do this using one of the communication/control programs which is more programmable — bCNC seems a likely candidate, or CNCjs as @Julien noted.
For jogging, I just use a USB-connected keypad, pulled over to the Shapeoko (you could use a bluetooth one also, but I find wired more reliable). Simple and inexpensive. You put CM in the Jog screen and then you have numeric keys 1-4 (numlock 1-4) for setting speed, arrows (up, dn, left, right) for jogging, and pgup and pgdn for Z control. It works.
I like these little keyboards -
for jogging around, but you bring up a good point @zburhop. I stand in front of my machine with the wireless keyboard to jog, but then if I’m probing I have to go back to the computer to change from jog/probe screens. Not a big deal, but it would be cool to have more options. StreamDeck is a really nice tool that I use for video calls and other workflow tasks on my main computer.
That was what I used before I bought the streamdeck for other purposes. Its not what I would call sexy. And sexy is really important for my shop. Now that streamdeck is wired into my life so heavily I wont except defeat lol. Looks like maybe its time to ditch carbide motion. Thanks for the recommendations. Ill get into those tonight.
Has anyone tried to setup macros on excel? It worked on an old program called “Open Office Calc” and Excel alternative but it requires java. You may need to download it yourself. I did this for my parents to record their old albums on their computer in mp3 format. It would record the motion and clicks of the mouse when in recording mode. Then when the button was clicked on it would run the recorded action. I wonder if this would work on Carbide motion? I will do some testing. I downloaded Java but it’s not working. Maybe somebody that is better on computers can get it to work. It will record the macro but after you save it and reopen it the program gives me the Java JRE error.
I found this program called Pulover’s Macro Creator. It records the actions of the mouse and keyboard. It looks like it would allow access to the AntiMicro program for assigning buttons. Used up my time in the garage for the day. Will test further later in the week. So far it starts carbide motion and connects the cutter. I think this will work.
Neat ill look at that too!
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