Using Chromebook to Run Easel?

Easel Easel Pro
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I’ve got an ASUS Chromebook to run my CNC in my shop. I set up/calibrated my X-Carve using my Mac Mini (brought it in the shop from my office in the house) and it ran fine. I was under the impression once I did that intitial run I could use a Chromebook to run the carves in the shop.

I rather have a $200 Chromebook in the shop then using a actual MAC/PC if possible. Is this not the case? I tried to install the drivers but i get the error message they cannot install due to it being a CHROMEOS.

Any advice? Before i bought my X-Carve I saw quite a few people using the Chromebooks to run Easel & the X-Carve so that’s why I purchased a Chromebook.

Thanks in Advance!

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I couldn’t get mine to work on the Chromebook default OS, but installing Linux Mint was pretty easy (never done it before so newbie there). Once that OS is installed, you can install firefox/IE/chrome, the easel driver, and its pretty much smooth sailing from there.

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I really hope Inventables will come with a official chrome app/driver soon. A chromebook is perfect for online software as Easel.

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Good to hear. Came searching as i was thinking of a chromebook as my surface laptop wont live long in a workshop. Ill install mint

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I could not get my chrome to down load the linux software i am having problems can anyone help

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Did you do anything special to get the driver to work on Linux? I have a Chromebook and I’ve installed Linux but the driver won’t work for me. The carve button stays blue and I can’t seem to get it to turn green. Any tips? :slight_smile:

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Did you install Linux Mint or another variant? It’s been a year since I fiddled with it so I don’t know if any updates/changes took place that would cause problems but I don’t remember anything specific that I had to do. I just ran through the Mint install > installed firefox > installed plugin

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I installed Linux Ubuntu 18.04.4. Do you know which version of the Easel driver you have installed? I downloaded 0.3.18 but maybe if I downgrade the driver it could work, or maybe it would be best to delete Linux Ubuntu and start all over with Linux Mint. The only reason I went with 18.04.4 was because that was what Inventables supported (just not when it’s on a Chromebook). Thanks for your response!

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I know this is a very old post but I just recently got into CNC thanks to a surprise Christmas gift of a Genmitsu 3018 pro. My only available control computer for it is an old Acer c720 chromebook. I’ve got that up and running with crouton and Ubuntu 18.04. I was able to get UGS and Candle working with some effort but Easel stubbornly refused to connect.

Here is what I finally did to get it working, in case someone else runs across this post:

Install the unofficial Easel drivers from here: https://github.com/samyk/easel-driver

Note that if you do not have curl installed you may need to install it first:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install curl
curl --version

Okay, now you have the unofficial Easel drivers installed. Now run this command in the terminal:

screen -r easel

Now make sure your cnc machine is on, usb plugged in, etc. and log in the Easel website and pull up a project.

If you’re like me, at this point your terminal screen where Easel is running will start saying over and over:

Error Permission Denied, cannot open /dev/ttyUSB0

This is Easel trying to connect to your machine.

To fix this you need to add your user to the dialout group and also give permissions for the usb:

sudo adduser MyUser dialout
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/ttyUSB0

For me, with Easel open in Firefox this instantly changed the carve and jog buttons from blue to green and I was able to now control my machine from Easel for the first time. You may need to log out and back in to Linux if it doesn’t but that is what got it working for me! Hope this helps someone out there as I have spent weeks trying to get this working :joy: - Glen

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