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It seems to be working now. I power cycled the X-Controller after reflashing it and before I ran machine setup, but I moved right from setup to the test carve and I’ve got a feeling that the controller should be power cycled again after setup, but before you run a test carve. It didn’t work when I went directly from the setup to the test carve, but did work after that when I happened to have re-powered the machine. It’s these edge cases that drive people nuts and cause tech support phone calls.
I did notice that there’s a usability issue with the test probe carve sequence. If the machine has limit switches the user has likely started off by homing the machine, so the bit is at maximum Z. For safety reasons the probing is set to a max of 15mm. If the user follows the instructions exactly and has only moved X and Y before probing the probe will likely fail. Two things should be changed - one is the instructions should be changed to indicate that before probing the Z should be moved to “close” to the top of the touch plate. The other thing that would be nice is to have a “try again, keep going” button if the probe didn’t touch the plate - don’t make the user go back through the entire panel.
I understand, but if you follow the directions to the letter you will probably run into the issue, especially newcomers. And sooner or later most people would probably not have moved it close enough and would appreciate the “keep going” button.
Apparently the Inventables probe socket closes the connection when the probe isn’t plugged in, so the probe is low when not plugged in, pulled high internally when plugged in but not contacted, then low again when the bit contacts the touch plate.
I’d be concerned about whether the 1.0c that you’re installing is actually for the gShield. The Xcontroller has different pin mappings for the signals so if it’s mapped for the Xcontroller, it won’t work for you.
You’d probably need to change the Inventables code for 1.0c to map for the Gshield as opposed to the Xcontroller.
I can take a stab at reverting the proper file that you can just swap with what you downloaded from Github.
I’d like to see where in the code that is. I only saw different pin mappings for different CPUs, but not for X-Controller vs GRBL board. But maybe I missed it.
I don’t think it’s X-Controller specific, it’s more about the plug that comes with the probe. However it did work for me today and I’m not using the Inventables probe and don’t have that normally closed behavior.
It’d be the file revision as opposed to different files. I think it’s the “cpu_mapping” file but I’m not home to check. That is the file that I believe sets up pins and their directions and it could be different between the two. The official release states that 1.0c is for the Xcontroller so if the mapping changed, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to maintain backwards compatibility since I think the same processor is used between them but, again, I could be wrong…unfortunately it’s happened before.
I just checked the Master branch, v1.0c branch, and the x-carve branch and the cpu mapping file for the atmega328p has the same probe pin of PORTC bit 5, so unless it is somewhere else the pin mapping should be identical.
As a follow-up (and I had some time), I checked the Xcontroller schematic. It looks like they’ve kept the pin mapping the same between the Arduino Uno and the Xcontroller PCB so you maintain that code portability which also keeps it aligned with GRBL itself. The comment on the release page of “This is the official Grbl 1.0c for Inventables X-Carve using X-Controller.” and no mention of the Arduino/gShield combo made me wonder.
Phil: When you flash the Arduino, is your first step always loading ALL of your previous GRBL settings? The setting for $10 may be causing your issue. 1.0c changes the effects of $10 and, per previous posts, this is how they track Probing in Easel. If you pare down your GRBL settings that you load to the ones of “value” (calibration settings), it may work a lot better for you. Just another thought.
I’m using the 1.0c firmware (Arduino/gShield) and probing works fine for me with UGCS (version 1.0.9). I don’t use Easel so I can’t speak to that issue.
I wonder if the problems with probing could be related to the fact that 1.0c uses negative machine coordinates? I changed a couple of entries in config.h in the grbl folder and now have zero based coordinates. I do a have a new X-Controller and probing in Easel didn’t work at all until I reflashed it with 1.0c. I did some tests before and after flashing and UGS, PicSender, and my own g code sender worked as expected both times.
Here is an alternate method for uploading firmware through Easel. This is a beta feature we are making available to folks on this forum thread. We hope to have this down to a few button clicks by the end of next week so it is available for everyone - stay tuned. For Z-Probe users please note the Inventables Z-Probe and Z-Probe Easel functionality is currently optimized for use with the X-Controller.
Step 1: Gather necessary requirements:
Download and install the required Easel Driver (version 0.3.1): Mac, PC
Big problem was getting 1.0c to flash. Arduino would say it uploaded but easel reported old grbl and never show probe connecte. Once I got grbl to 1.0c probe setup was easy.
Challenges i had to overcome.
Wait for a few others to report wins in this thread (hardest part)
Failed to get Easel upload to work, would hang forever on uploading.
Arduino updated a few times, even saw “Update Done” but every time Easel reported 0.9j not 1.0c, probe would fail
(solution on os x) Delete all my old grbl libraries from Arduino, updated Arduino to 1.6.12 then used the directions to flash linked from this thread
Don’t even bother machine setup until you confirm version with machine inspector.
WIN!
Image of the problem from part 1 above “Carve” was green
