A lot of times there is extra USB headers on your mother board that can be utilized for extra ports , if you have room for another pci card they have pci USB cards as well you can add to your pc.
I would rather have this than a hub there’s even cheaper ones on eBay
https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Hi-Speed-USB-5-Port-Card/dp/B000E6HFX0
Are you connecting your x-controller directly to you PC currently? Because if so you don’t need a powered USB hub. In fact you shouldn’t use a hub of any kind if you don’t have to.[quote=“HaldorLonningdal, post:123, topic:32887”]
Regular USB device take power directly from connected PC through USB cable.Powered USB hub have a separate power supply so no power will be drawn from the computer. These are typically more resistant to electrical noise.
[/quote]
This is partly correct information some USB devices take power from the PC, the x-controller does not. If you don’t believe me flip the power switch on the controller and you can no longer connect to it. So long story short don’t buy a USB hub if you don’t need it. I dont think the USB cable is the source of you original problem, but lets rule it out because its easy try a different cable. see if that fixes your problem. Then start looking for loose connections both inside and outside X-controller.
See my previous post. Don’t buy anything yet
Read my previous post. If you don’t need a hub don’t use one.[quote=“PhilJohnson, post:133, topic:32887”]
You’re missing the point. The hub gets its power from its own transformer. It’s basically an amplifier of sorts.
[/quote]
Like you said.
Mine will be here Tuesday.
There are many reasons that a USB hub (powered or not) could affect the connectivity of a USB device. Some USB implementations are better than others.
The original electronics (Arduino/gShield) uses a separate processor running the LUFA library to implement USB operations for the Arduino’s ATmega328P. This library has many implementations and some of them are good and some of them are, well, not as good. Many people had issues with connectivity with this version of the electronics.
The X-controller has done two things that improve connectivity greatly. One, it doesn’t draw significant power from the USB cable. So little it’s not out the realm of reason to consider it to be zero.
The other improvement is use of the FTDI chip to implement the USB connection. This chip is all but the defacto standard for serial interfaces and has a proven track record in the industry.
By all means if you have a connectivity problem and you want to try a USB hub to eliminate it, go ahead. It’s possible that the USB port you are trying to use on a computer is not up to the task and the hub might help, but I doubt that the X-controller is the problem.
Just because you typed the word “powered” and “USB hub” and came up with 50 results doesn’t mean it solved any thing. I’m sure it did help some people. I know you didn’t read them all in the one minute it took you to respond to my post. I’m not going to either.I’m not disputing the fact that it helps some people. I just don’t think that JanVanderlinden’s original problem he asked for help with is related to the USB cable at all. It an intermittent power failure most likely and since the X-Controller is not power via the USB cable we can probably rule it out but i suggested trying a different cable because it an easy first step. hence the recommendation not to buy one yet.
Well to be clear, Larry did indeed find a huge problem with my post processor, and I took Phil’s suggestion to try a new cable with the chokes on it.
With these two “improvements” my problems pretty much went away.
However this “freezing” of UGS has happened 3 times since I made these changes.
(which is a vast improvement over what I was dealing with)
And It only happens at the end of the carve when the machine goes back to XYZ, and the motor, and dust collector shuts off via the relay.
No when u put that card in it’s going to pull 5v from the power supply instead of using the 5v rail that the onboard USB uses. Trust me I’ve been an I.t. Tech for 16 years and this is how you truly get more USB as long as your power supply has enough wattage you will be fine, if your pc was built this decade it will have at least 300watt power supply and that pci card will draw its power from that. It uses the 5v rail from the pci bus. It’s cleaner and more reliable than a hub.
Do you have your dust collection hose grounded? Is the frame of the X-carve grounded? You may be having a static electricity problem.
I don’t know Phil I really am just trying to be helpful. My suggestion to try a different USB cable was simple, sometimes even expensive USB cables have problems. Back to trying to be helpfull, [quote=“JanVanderlinden, post:143, topic:32887”]
And It only happens at the end of the carve when the machine goes back to XYZ, and the motor, and dust collector shuts off via the relay.
[/quote]
Is everything on the same outlet? if you can separate the controller to a different outlet try that.
No, I don’t have the hose or the frame grounded.
Yes, everything is on the same 20 amp. circuit.
I work with a company that uses pc’s with about 10 USB devices on them , occasionally you will see a message warning that the USB hub has insufficient power to handle the devices ,usually when u are using an external hard drive. In my professional experience , we add those pci cards and were able to run , barcode scanners , printers , external hard drives , charge the shark handheld inventory ordering scanner , as well as charge a couple iPads from one pc with a 400w power supply , unless your running a high powered video card and more than 2 mechanical hard drives and a half dozen fans , your pc’s power supply is going to be more than sufficient to power an add in pci USB 2.0 card I think USB wattage is 2.5 watts .500ma max which is a lot at 5v…
A lot cleaner less wires in my industry I battle rats nests everyday I work as a I.T. Tech for a convenience store chain the less wires the better!
If you are talking about the picture with the COM port error, it’s most likely just a race condition. UGCS has most likely processed the end of program, queued it up for display in the window and moved forward to the port change ---- before the display is updated the error occurs and is displayed before the end of the g-code file sequence gets displayed.
I have noticed that there is a pretty big delay in the UGCS window updates for the g-code stream in version 1.0.9. I don’t know if the nightly build is the same.
It may be a voltage spike when the relay closes. Even if you have to use an extension cord try plugging the controller into another outlet preferably on a separate breaker.
Based on what you have already done, this would be my next area to investigate.
First you want to determine if the outlet is properly wired. What I’m getting at here is grounding. If you are not comfortable with power panels, leave this to an electrician.
As just a temporary test, you could run a large gauge extension cord to a location where you can get to a different outlet on a different breaker.
I would have the relay, the router, and the dust collector fed from a separate circuit from everything else.
I’ve had the same message if I disconnect reconnect power to the controller while ugs is connected.
We seem to be on the same page.
Yes, I would expect this as you will definitely lose USB connectivity.
PS same page
