Still plugging along.

Nothing really to show or talk about that much. I have been playing with a Fez Panda II to see if I would like to use for a controller. It is an interesting board. Not the same as an Arduino but some similarities. It has a 32 bit Arm processor running at 72 MHz (I think that is the speed) and more ram. It is actually cheaper than the Arduino Mega and has about the same IO capability. It also has a built in SD card reader. The downside is that it is more electronically delicate than the Arduino for one thing. I burned out the voltage regulator on my first one when I accidentally shorted out a servo control line (I wasn't wearing my glasses and stuck it in the wrong row on my breadboard) *poof*.  I will try to replace the voltage regulator to see if I can salvage the board but I doubt it. It is also pickier about it's supply voltage than the Arduino. It also is a bit more complicated by matching the firmware to the version of the libraries. The biggest problem I have seen is that there is not real high quality documentation and really crappy example code.

I have been having mixed emotions programming it in C#. There is a bit of a learning curve but the language is ok. I don't like not having the delayMicroseconds() that the Arduino has.It is not a major problem, I just did an empty loop and adjusted the count to get smooth motion from the steppers. Just annoying.  For this setup, I am using some little Pololu stepper controllers. They seem to be more reliable than the Easy Drivers I was using before. They would work for a while and then crap out. I think it might have been heat related. Out of the 5 I have bought, I only have one that is still alive. If I get it working well, I can plug the grblShield into it just fine.

As far as the final setup for my CNC when I get stuff put together, I am not sure what I will really use to control. I will probably just switch back and forth and see what works best in practice. Theory only works so far.

I will probably stay somewhat sporadic with my updates here as I am getting stuff ready for the new semester at work and still doing a big re-arrangement in my workspace in my garage. Since it has been 103F every day, I don't work for long stretches at it in the garage when I get home. Thankfully, summer is winding down and it will start cooling off.