[kkester1963]

My notice of in stock from 3 weeks ago turned into an email yesterday sayin a delivery delay of 8 to 10 weeks. These are just to much in demand.

[doorknob]

The Raspberry Pi board arrived today, so maybe they are in stock and shipping now.

The keyboard is scheduled to be delivered on Wednesday.

[jm82792]

I'd hold my enthusiasm until you actually get RTAI and LinuxCNC installed, and actually run a latency check.

Mark

Yep, that's where I am at

[wendtmk]

Yep, that's where I am at

And are the results in?

Mark

[jm82792]

Sorry for the vagueness...
I'm waiting for someone to get LinuxCNC to work with Raspberry Pi as well.

[svenakela]

I have a perfect job for a Raspberry in the LinuxCNC environment; acting as an X server.
Recently I started a discussion on the mailing list about hardware performance and during that discussion I tested both my existing hardware and two brand new computers with all the GUI fancy stuff happening on the PC and then with GDM stopped and all client apps (linuxcnc, latency-test etc) remote to offload the hardware from graphics.
All three PC's were running with a latency 40 % or lower without the graphics.

Run the X server remote on the Raspberry Pi!

[andypugh]

I'm waiting for someone to get LinuxCNC to work with Raspberry Pi as well.

Now that there is at least experimental support for LinuxCNC to work with PREEEMPT_RT and Xenomai as well as with RTAI the task may have got easier.
It is even possible that it will just work with right compiler flags.

[jm82792]

My P4 desktop machine for LinuxCNC is starting to go down hill.
For the past few weeks it's been hanging every once in awhile.
I'd love the Raspberry PI to work
I just don't have enough time to grasp the inner workings of Linux,
that could take a very long time :/

[unterhaus]

I don't know if the RPi will ever really work that well for linuxcnc, but I'm almost positive that the Beaglebone will. There has been some really impressive work along those lines detailed on the mailing list.

[jm82792]

I think someone could profit off of some sort of a setup of a breakout board, the actual board(BeagleBone, Raspberry PI, or so forth), and a LinuxCNC build being hosted on the store's website for Some Sort of an Affordable Embedded PC.

[unterhaus]

there are already some very interesting beaglebone "capes". Suspect there is still some room for a more cnc oriented "cape" with step/dir outputs as well as digital I/O. The problem is selling the beaglebone board itself doesn't make any money. As always with linuxcnc, it's hard to sell a package because people always want something a little different from the norm.

There probably will be some RPi cnc systems, but my thought is that they will not be running linuxcnc. I'd be happy to be wrong, I have an RPi.

[109jb]

I see over on the LinuxCNC.org site that there is now a heading for the RPi in the wiki. I also see that someone has actually run steppers albeit without RTAI support yet. It is getting closer and I do think it will get there. The question is whether it will have the performance necessary.

[tjbaudio]

I have a perfect job for a Raspberry in the LinuxCNC environment; acting as an X server.
Recently I started a discussion on the mailing list about hardware performance and during that discussion I tested both my existing hardware and two brand new computers with all the GUI fancy stuff happening on the PC and then with GDM stopped and all client apps (linuxcnc, latency-test etc) remote to offload the hardware from graphics.
All three PC's were running with a latency 40 % or lower without the graphics.

Run the X server remote on the Raspberry Pi!

I would be very interested in how those tests were run. I happen to have a second linux computer sitting right next to my my linux CNC macine. For various reasons it would be very nice to have both computers use the x server on the non cnc computer. I am pretty comfortable on the command line and working with config files.

[skullworks]

I got the new "B" model with 512mb and a 32pin GPIO expander card that plugs onto the on board GPIO pins.

I hear there is a small PCB that can be mounted on the I2C pins to give system clock functions. To me this won't be needed as this is the front end for the real MITX PC control and the Pi can use the control PC as a time server on boot, just put a delay circuit on the 5V line feeding the Pi from the PC powersupply to not power up the Pi until the main PC is ready. The ITX board running without graphics will just rock on jitter figures.

I wanted to use mine as a control panel interface. Use these GPIO pins to sense START, FEED HOLD, Rapid Override 100|50|25|10 (2bit BCD), Feed Override 10-150% (4bit BCD), Spindle Override 50-120% (3bit BCD), MODE (Auto|Manual|MDI|Edit 2bit BCD) I can put a 4 port gigabit switch to link the Pi to the ITX and the outside world.

E-STOP is hard wired straight through.

I don't know what kind of graphics quality can be had on the HDMI out as far as psydo realtime drawing of the cutter path but this is more of a wish than a need - I would likely use TK-EMC anyway.

[eskimobob]

I've read this topic with much interest

I've had my Raspi for some months and played about with it just fine but not found anything that has grabbed my attention enough to hold it. The progress on this has the potential to do that:banana:

I remember commenting elsewhere about the idea of putting EMC2 on a Pi back before they shipped but the comments at that time were so disheartening I didn't think it would come to anything

[unterhaus]

This was posted today to the linuxcnc developer's list:

I have done no further work on the Raspberry, I do not consider that platform particularly useful to base work on.

OTOH, the Beaglebone is almost a done deal.

[wyzarddoc]

Many years ago when I first started with computers we had "Main Frames" now everything is distributed balewolf clusters so it will be with LinuxCNC in the future. I am currently testing a Raspberry Pi front end talking to 3+ arm micro-controllers (one for each axis) to take the place of the usual Linux x86 box. They are a magnitude faster, can handle more interlocks and allow adaptive tuning on each axis. I plan on investigating current trajectory software to see if has any use in this system. Don't expect rapid progress since I am working alone but will post from time to time about progress. When the bugs are worked out will put together boards/system for new and retrofits at a reasonable cost.

[arvidb]

I've seen some comments mentioning that the R-Pi is missing a real time clock, and comments mentioning clock add-on boards in this thread.

Just to make it clear: a Real Time Clock (RTC) keeps track of calendar time (i.e. what hour and day it is). The only similarity with the kind of real time required for running LinuxCNC is the name. So the lack of an rtc on the R-Pi is completely irrelevant.

[kinsa]

I have managed to run Linuxcnc on RPi using Xenomai. I also managed to compile and run the web based interface of miniemc2.

I think with an external FPGA board, RPi can be a modest cnc controller. I'm still waiting for my ebay fpga board to arrive in order to continue testing.

If a mini2440 board can do it, I don't see why RPi can't.

[kinsa]

I have managed to off load the step generation using a pic32 that is connected thru the spi interface.

Linuxcnc is currently running over a remote X session over ssh using the tk mini interface.

So far it is working nicely according to my scope. The next step will be to connect it to a physical machine.

Cheers!