I did some testing on 1.1d for the past couple of weeks, behaviour is good and jogging works great on Arduino UNO with Protoneer Shield with Pololu stepper driversl
Unless others chime in with success on the X-Controller I will likely wait until after the holidays… too many ornaments, not enough hours… 
I do not have an X-Controller, but I have been running Grbl 1.1 for several weeks now on my SO2 (Arduino Uno and Gshield with full home and limit switches - spindle engraving only - PicSender) with no issues encountered. The new feed rate override in v1.1 is a great feature.
Two things that the Xcontroller firmware changed in default GRBL and this wouldn’t have out of the box:
- M7 output control. GRBL disables this by default.
- Safety Door enabled. This would change the behavior when you press the Pause/Feed Hold button on the front of the Xcontroller.
I’d test it out on mine but we’re slammed with holiday orders for our vinyl stuff and I can’t even get down to the basement to run the machine for things I need to get done.
Any one tried this on the old Arduino with GShield hardware combination one an X-Carve yet?
Is it recommended that we upgrade GRBL to the latest 1.1e software?
If so, does Inventables have a fork already configured for the X-Carve?
What are the benefits to upgrading?
I know there is a lot of information on the GRBL GitHub site, but nothing really specific to the Arduino/GShield configuration.
Thanks.
It should work fine on the Arduino/gShield. I did some testing with the 1.1d beta release and didn’t see any issues there.
Just from a personal perspective, unless there is a feature of the new firmware that you can’t live without, I would wait until there is significant testing before I upgraded (for me that would be six months to a year).
Hi Larry, thanks for the good advice.
I think personally I will wait until Inventables gets around to making an X-Carve specify fork.
The only feature that I think would be interesting to try is the new jogging implementation, but I can wait a bit longer for that.
Do you have to have the computer connected to uno to download and install the Gebl 1.1? I ask because my shop doesn’t have Internet. I can download the file but then what? I think I get dumber every day.
Here is how to load the .hex file into the Arduino. You just have to have your computer hooked to the Arduino via the USB port.
Do I have to delete my previous GRBL first?
Thank you Larry M
For Grbl v0.9 with variable spindle PWM ENABLED: (NOTE: The Z-limit and the spindle enable pin are swapped, because we had to access the hardware PWM on D11 for variable spindle PWM output to work.) We are still updating this pin configuration at the moment by weighing future options. We’d like to only change the pins once. Stay tuned!
Is this an issue with going from an older grbl setup to the new?
There was a pin change going from grbl 0.8? to grbl 0.9?.
No pin changes from 0.9? to 1.0c or 1.1e.
Cool thanks LarryM.
I just want to make sure when I upgrade to the new controller firmware I don’t have to rewire anything.
Im working on 1 more 3d engrave then Im going to attempt to change to 1.1. I keep getting stream is null, is it because my files are to big for uno and UGS? Im really thinking about changing to Smoothie.
This doesn’t appear to be an Uno or grbl issue.
What version of UGS are you running?
My warning is when I upgraded my arduino to GRBL 1.1 is that you BACKUP your settings first. I am using a Protoneer / Raspberry configuration, but it still uses an Arduino, and my settings reset to whatever was default in the HEX I downloaded from the GRBL we site. VERY important is the $100, $101, and $102 is that these are the steps per mm. Mine went from $100 and $101 being set to 80 to 250 – imagine my surprise when my 4x4inch test cut after the upgrade went to 16x16.
Really you should wait for Inventables to release a 1.1 version for the X-Carve, unless you know what you’re doing. What I did was connect to the arduino via serial, then issue a $$ to output the GRBL settings. Do this before you upgrade and compare them after.
There used to be a cautionary note in the README for v1.0d that the default GRBL settings are loaded on first flash due to new memory items ($30, $31, and $32) being added. Maybe that was lost going to 1.1.
From the GRBL FAQ for 1.1:
“After flashing, Grbl tries to check the settings in EEPROM. If it finds an incompatibility, it will automatically clear the EEPROM and restore its default.”
An Easel machine setup should reset the GRBL configuration to the Inventables default values for your specific machine size but if you’ve calibrated your X/Y/Z motion, you’ll need to re-enter that manually.
I’ve not yet tried the upgrade on my Xcontroller, this is all “in theory”.
This is good advice for any version change. I specifically call this out in my “readme” file and people still wipe out their settings.