That interface looks pretty nice, modern and powerful, but will it work with the X-Carve ?
I’m not a expert in code, arduino or any of those think so the easiest the better (aka : i want to spend my time making project, not making the machine work…
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Yeah, i’d also like to know if it’ll work. Can anyone from inventables comment?
Looks like it needs a TinyG which runs a different processor, but shouldn’t the Gcode be the same?
Chilipeppr has version for grbl and for TinyG. We have not run either here yet. I think Easel will be much easier to you to start with, especially if you have an X-Carve.
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Sound a reasonable advise. Thanks,
Yes, ChiliPeppr will work fine since X-Carve is Grbl-based and ChiliPeppr has a Grbl workspace. Just navigate to ChiliPeppr - Hardware Fiddle and you should be good to go.
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@TotoTiti To give you some context @JohnLauer wrote Chilipeppr so he would be the ultimate authority on your question!
Thanks for jumping in there John.
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Sweet! Just to let y’all know, this is the main reason i’m buying an X-Carve, so far the community has been awesome! I love how everyone works together for the greater good! Bravo!
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I guess that’s about as good as an endorsement as it get ! Thanks so much guys !
Howdy. I didn’t make Chilipeppr and it’s awesome. I had problems with my laptop that made Easel/USB sort of unpredictable, so started going down that path. Mr. Lauer, thank you–it’s sort of everything. You can jog, stop, pause, resume, plus watch where you are in the process if you’re so inclined. There’s even stupendous stuff like texting you when a job is done, or pausing and texting when it reads an M6 (tool change).
I still use Easel to generate gcode, but then I drop that into the Chilipeppr window. I’m not sure how technical I am–between the communities around these products and Really Good Instructions, I muddled through enough to get this stuff working. Chilipeppr is great, though–an absolute win. Since there’s a raspberry Pi executable (and because Wyolum’s Alamode exists), I’ve got a compact little CNC controller that I don’t have to have an entire computer hooked up to. It just sits out in the garage and works.
TL;DR: I can’t say enough good things about Chilipeppr.
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Nice, I really like the idea of this on a raspberry PI connected to the X-Carve. It would be great if you could remotely send it gcode from another device or control it over the network on something like an iPad. At my hacker space we use OctoPrint for controlling our 3D printers, and something like that for the X-Carve would be amazing.
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Really cool! I’d like to get this running with my X-Carve & Smoothieboard.
@ChrisEllerby I agree. I would prefer to keep laptops / desktops out of the woodshop if at all possible …
The X-Carve (1000x1000) will be my first CNC machine, and while waiting for the machine to arrive (I ordered in April) I have been investigating the whole software side of things and playing around with the Raspberry Pi (version 2). So far, I’ve looked at grblweb and ChiliPeppr.
Grblweb appears to be an “inside the firewall” solution. You install it on the Pi, it connects to the CNC via serial port, and it serves up a web page that you browse with a network connected device (tablet, phone, PC). So, your URL is the local IP address of the Raspberry Pi. There is a downloadable grblweb Raspberry Pi image available, but it only works for version 1 of the Pi. I have been working with the “NOOBS” Raspbian image and the grblweb source (downloadable from git) but I don’t appear to have a successful build yet (I am a Linux noob!). Hopefully the grblweb developer will be providing a version 2 image soon …
ChiliPeppr appears to be a cloud-based solution, like Easel. You install a JSON server on your Pi (which talks to the CNC via serial port), but the page you are browsing is served up by the ChiliPeppr site. You sign in to the ChiliPeppr site with your Google account, configure the local IP address of the Pi, and control the machine from there. (@JohnLauer, do I have this right?)
It looks like, in either case, you can control the machine via any device that is network-connected and has a web browser, such as an iPad, Android tablet, or smartphone. In one case, you are browsing inside the firewall, and in the other case, you are in the cloud …
The one question I have with any of these Raspberry Pi solutions is performance. Are there limitations to the amount of gcode that can be sent to the machine, and have it perform well? For example, can I send it a very intricate relief carving or do a corian lithograph and have it run to completion? Will it be slower than having a full-blown PC / laptop as the controller?
I think there’s a limit in how much local cache ChilliPeppr will use, but so far that’s only meant I had to delete old jobs. It’s handled some pretty hefty g-code (for small detailed things) nicely, and that kind of surprised me.
No speed problem at all–it’s your network speed (plus overhead) racing your mill’s feed rate. The client fills a buffer, then tries to keep the buffer full, like CDR’s used to have to do when they were new.
I’ve been looking at GRBLWeb too (http://xyzbots.com/grblweb.html) and so far it looks like what I’m after. Though I’m really liking ChiliPepper as well.
I have a few Raspberry Pis laying around, and would really like to use my new Pi2 model B, which apparently is too new for GRBLWeb?
My plan is to operate it headless, and control it from a spare Android tablet that I can dedicate to the workshop.
As for performance, the Pi2 is more than capable, but I also think the previous versions of the Pi should be fine as well. I don’t think the g-coad ends up being that much data, and I believe (could be wrong) it’s streamed line by line, so the total size of the project should not matter.
I’m really excited to start setting up this part of the project.
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This is my plan as well; run the Pi headless and control with an Android tablet. And I’d prefer to run entirely inside the firewall instead of in the cloud …
The build up on xyzbots is definitely not happy with the Pi v2; it will not boot. I may pick up an older Pi to get things going, unless I can get the source compiled and running on the Pi v2 …
I still have a few weeks before my X-Carve arrives …
It looks like you can update the SD card on an older Raspberry Pi and recompile so it will run on the Pi2: Raspberry Pi 2 - Model B v1.2 - ARM Cortex-A53 with 1G RAM : ID 2358 : $39.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
I’ve been looking more into ChilliPeppr, and I’m really impressed with their JS framework. You can create your own custom widgets and workspaces, which is super powerful. I’ve been playing with it a bit: ChiliPeppr - Hardware Fiddle
Here is a great tutorial on making a custom “Hello World” widget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7G_veKyb_k
As someone who does a lot of JS development, I’m in love.
/Chris
@ChrisEllerby Thanks for the tip.
FYI - I did end up getting a Raspberry Pi v1 B+ and I have the GRBLWeb build successfully installed and running on it. I’ll probably just go with this for now instead of trying to get the updated image running on a Pi v2. If I feel I need more computing horsepower I’ll give the updated image a shot on a v2.
I am also going to look at ChiliPeppr as well. Cool stuff …
I just connected to the x-carve and did a dry-run. Looks fine without the spindle on!
As someone else mentioned, there did not seem to be support for spindle on/off. Need to find that now.
how did you get chilipeppr to work with your machine? i cant seem to get mine to work with chilipeppr. it recognizes the com port as arduino uno and grbl. but it says grbl is offline. cant do anything with it. mind helping me out?