Wireless or plug and play controller

Ok so I bought the pro, but I’m having an issue where a wireless controller or a plug and play to the shapeoko would be nice to have. My computer is located in another room, approximately 30 feet away. It’s such a task to go back and forth 100 times trying to zero my bit. I don’t really want to buy a laptop just to jog the machine. Any recommendations?

It’s not in stock, but the specs should give you an idea of what would work. I bought the following mini fanless PC: Amazon Link.

Then using double sided tape, I taped it to the back of an old LCD monitor. So in total it cost me about $100, and my Shapeoko has a dedicated PC, with no fans, meaning no dust being pulled into the case.

Not sure if this would work but you could get a longer video cable and run it through to the shop fpr a second monitor and use a wireless keyboard and mouse. Monitors are cheap and an arm to put the monitor on is also cheap. Take a look around the forum about the Raspberry Pi to see if you can get one of the all in one Pi’s to use. There are other gcode senders that work with other OS besides Win and Mac. Some have gotten tablets to work as well. The tablets and Raspberry Pi are very cheap. The tablet and Pi could be networked to get your gcode files from your PC.

I used to have a Shark CNC and I bought a used Dell from Ebay with two monitors with a Windows 10 license, wireless for less than $200.00. You could also network that to get your gcode from your design computer.

I have a raspberry pi 3 that I’ve used to run my 3d printers. I guess I need to look into using it with an extra monitor that I have. I thought I’d seen something in the past about using a raspberry pi to operate the cnc.

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They have a newer version in stock that I’m looking into. I forgot to mention in my post that I have a raspberry pi that may function the same. Thanks

Check out the thread here for more information on running Carbide Motion on a Raspberry Pi: Carbide Motion on a Raspberry Pi

Some folks go the touchscreen route but I prefer a full monitor + monitor arm.

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Please don’t use such a long USB cable to control the machine — ~6ft. most we recommend.

Any computer which meets our system specifications will work:

but note that Carbide Create increases memory requirements and wants a 64-bit OS.

A fanless (sealed) tablet makes a lot of sense in a shop environment and even very modest ones (which don’t meet the system requirements) have been used successfully, w/ the usual suspects being RCA Cambio and Fusion 5, w/ some folks using Surface Go units (but contrari-wise getting the higher-spec units).

Other options are Intel Compute Sticks, or refurbished Mac Minis

Or, as @mingle noted, a Raspberry Pi — I have a Pi 4 and RasPad v3 screen which I got for testing purposes — it works well, save for my difficulties w/ remapping the gamepad controller layout I prefer.

I just ordered a raspberry pi 400, so I’m looking forward to going cordless from my desktop. I read over the blog written up about using a pi, but I got overwhelmed with over 300 posts and really unsure about where to start. I’m sure with a little patience and many fits thrown, I will manage to figure it out.

It’s pretty straight-foward:

  • get a Pi
  • outfit it w/ power supply, case, screen, mouse, &c.
  • update it
  • install the .deb from: Carbide 3D
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Well you made it seem much simpler than me trying to go through all those posts again trying to figure out what I need to actually control the machine. Thank you

Will why is this Pi or Linux version not shown when you go to get CM on the carbide3d.com website. I do not have a Pi but if I knew how simple and the software was available I would have tried it.

This is an example you dont know what you dont know (about).

I have one laptop and I carry it from the house to the shop. Every trip is a disaster waiting to happen by dropping or damaging my machine. A dedicated machine in the shop that is networked would be fantastic. I used to have a Shark CNC and I bought a used Dell from ebay to have a dedicated machine in the shop. I sold the Shark and the Dell with it. When I was using it I was just using NFS to get access to my files in the house computer and the shop computer. With the Pi I can envision a similar thing.

Because it is still in testing.

It moving up to the main page is for the folks in charge to decide.

Ok so it is still alpha or beta version. I thought maybe it was some secret society with an evil penguin as the leader.

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