How much interest for Linux and ChromeOS support?

@KennethConnell thanks for the kind words!

As far as what you’re seeing, it may be power. What I found was that I couldn’t get it to work (disconnect etc…) reliably with the power supply I had. I assumed the wifi was dropping out but I found that when I used one of those battery packs for cell phones (the ones that charge your phone) it worked. I ordered a 2.5A charger and it worked as well when I tried it last night. I’m also using a Pi 3.

Perhaps the EaselDriver is just less efficient and uses more power (wifi data and/or CPU cycles) than the JSON sender…

What distro are you using by the way? Also what is the current rating on the power supply you’re using for the Pi?
You can also try version EaselDriver 0.2.7; I just built it last night and tried a quick carve before uploading it.

Oh, and I just had another thought… and this could be it… Maybe it’s a permissions issue? (e.g. when it tries to write, it gets an error.) Based on your log’s it’s looking for fallback-versions of GRBL. Try running:
sudo chmod a+rwx /dev/ttyACM0
before starting EaselDriver and see if that does it. I’m not sure why the EaselDriver would specifically not work though vs others in that case, unless you ran the JSON server with sudo/root and not EaselDriver.

Also, make sure you don’t have the JSON sender running at the same time as EaselDriver, they don’t play nice together. :slight_smile:

OK, I got some progress today. got a new 2.5 amp power supply and plugged it in and same old thing. thought damn that didn’t work. so then I got to thinking the only other thing that was not stock was the firmware, I go the J-Tech laser and installed firmware 0.9g that picengrave recommends for PWM laser engraving, so I read that they have the new 1.0c updated so that you can use both spindle or laser so I downloaded that and install (flashed) the firmware. and presto connected and went straight to the set-up screen like it was supposed to. So in conclusion if you are running the picengrave 0.9g firmware it will not work with the Linux Easel driver. you will need to flash the newer 0.9j or the newest 1.0c. Thanks for all the help and I hope that this information helps someone else that finds themselves in the same situation.

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that xcarve-proxy start command from my Linux system also worked great. it was like bonus bonus. so I can run this from the raspberry pi or from the Linux system. Great work NathanielCaza many many thanks to you.

Has anyone used this on an X-Controller? I got it to work great on the Uno_GRBL board great but then got a new X-Controller in the mail and hooked it up and no luck. I did a symbolic link to /dev/ttyACM0 same as the old uno and still no luck. Can connect to the new X-Controller in UGS or Bcnc on port /dev/ttyACM0 or /dev/ttyUSB0 no problems. I am thinking it must be some part of the code that won’t recognize the vendor ID on the new X-Controller. Just wanted to know if anyone has used it with the X-Controller with success.

Wanted to try to update this with the new 3.1 drivers and got everything installed and compiled but then when I try to run it the AppImage failed and states could not cd to /usr ?? I am sure I am doing something wrong but I am not a programmer so I am asking has anyone compiled this for raspberry pi and if so can you post a link to download it. Thanks in advance.

Ok. I got this to compile and I also got it to connect to Easel with version 0.3.1 to the X-Controller. I have the pre-compiled AppImage if anyone wants it. I do not have a get-hub account so I did not upload it there. I still have not got it to connect to easel.inventable.com/setup but it will connect with easel.inventable.com and connect and carve. I want to continue working so that it can set-up properly as that is when you can use the touch plate and other settings.

Good news, I got this to set-up. What I did for a work around is open easel and have it connect, then while leaving that opened open a new tab and went to easel set-up because it was already opened on port /dev/ttyACM0 it connected and presto went though and completed the set-up sequence. Now I have probe functions and everything as it should be. Again a great big thanks to nathanielcaza for all his hard work on getting this going for all of us, without his ability to start this Linux driver, I would have never been smart enough to get it to work. great job and extremely happy.

1 Like

I’m glad you got it working!

I hadn’t realized that there is a download page with other/newer versions available (I only saw 0.2.7 from the setup page). The awesome news of that is I think I can automate detecting/building/publishing as soon as new versions are posted. I’ll see if I can get that going today :slight_smile:

Also, @KennethConnell, thank you for posting your progress as you were working through it, the context is helpful! Was there anything special you needed to do to get it to work, or was it just the process of getting it to build you were up against?

I am not 100% sure but when my Raspberry Pi 3 had an update, after that it would compile and work just fine. I believe it was the update that made the difference as after the update to the Raspberry Pi your version also began to work with the X-Controller. So I believe that something in the update corrected the way the USB port was reported or something like that as the only problem was serial port errors. I am just glad that these work with both the Adrunio GRBL combo and the new X-Controller.

Any updates to this? I am working on setting up a dedicated box in the shop - I have it running Linux Mint. I plan on using bCNC, but would like the option of Easel for some of my projects, particularly the ones where I am cutting out parts. I have yet to find a package that is as easy to adjust the material thickness and have the code change right away.

what I do is download this file (Link) from NathanielCaza, unzip to a location you choose, download the “MAC” version of Easel driver that you want to make for your system from Inventables (link) and place into the folder that you unzipped the other files to. you will need to also download the AppImageAssistant program(for your architecture) and place that into the folder. you need to read the readme file and make sure you have all the common tools for compiling programs installed to include the correct versions of node and nvm as needed. I then open the make file located in the folder that I extracted all that into and edit it to match the files that I downloaded (change easel driver from 0.2.7 to 0.3.2 etc.) then just run make in directory.

what architecture do you need, I have version 0.3,2 that I have complied for my Ubuntu X64 system I can send you.

That machine is running Mint 17.2 (based off of Ubuntu Trusty), x64, so I think that your version will work. If I find that it doesn’t, I’ll follow what you have written above. Thanks!

Email the simplest way to send the file?
reuben (dot) e (dot) bailey (at) gmail (dot) com

I have compiled programs on occasion, but I wind up needing to relearn how each time. :slight_smile:

Let me know if you get the file and If anything is wrong.

Thanks Kenneth. Might take me a bit to get a wireless adapter for the machine to test it out. I will let you know.

Hey guys, I just published a more recent build. I finally got my X-Controller/upgrade all done to test it.

The only change I had to make was to have iris-lib be the working directory. I’m giving it a shot on the Chromebook → RPi and so far so good. Full setup, homing, & z-probe went without a hitch.

1 Like

Aww… I couldn’t get my chrome OS (cloudready) to load the unpacked directory. I loaded the “static” directory, launched the app, but Easel wouldn’t recognize the driver. I left the window open that says “keep this window open”… Any thoughts???

Were you using chrome-port-forward & a linux box (like raspberry pi)? Or the chrome-driver app?

As an FYI/update: For future Linux driver builds, I’ve setup a job in the open build service from OpenSUSE. This way I can get new versions out quicker/easier, and more frequently. Hopefully that means others won’t need to build for themselves locally to get the most up-to-date version.

The latest github release has links to the repos, but I thought I would put them here too for quick reference:

Also: A 64-bit ARM Linux build is now available, though I have yet to try it :slight_smile:

1 Like