Machinekit Blog

Machinekit Blog: "In the past, the argument for minimum latency has been its usefulness for software-based step generation and quadrature encoders - the actual servo cycle computations do not need that low latency. But fact is - the PC's parallel port is an extinct piece of hardware (and even then RT-PREEMPT can deliver reasonable software step rates). Plus, inexpensive FPGA hardware can deliver higher performance if needed."

'via Blog this'

This quote is the first time I have seen it acknowledged that the parallel port is gone. I had wondered why it looks as though it is still the only way to interface to hardware.

Yesterday after reading the above article I put

                       FPGA hardware linuxcnc

into the google search box and got a bunch of interesting results.    FPGA field programmable gate array.

My problem with the LINUXCNC documentation is it is very dense reading. I will need to reread it with the knowledge that other hardware interfaces are available in addition to the legacy parallel port. When I scanned the appropriate sections I originally saw nothing about other routes.    

I have this in my EverNote and will post this here so I don't forget.
Now I need to let this set for a couple of months and get back to FREECAD.

 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RaspberryPi
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RaspbianXenomaiBuild
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?LinuxCNCKnowledgeBase
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?FPGA
 https://emergent.unpythonic.net/01166412010
 http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?EMC2_Supported_Hardware

Blogger Buzz: Blog This!

Blogger Buzz: Blog This!: "If this sounds familiar, you may find the “Blog This!” Chrome Extension of interest. It enables you post to your blog from any web page with just one click. The Extension is available on the Chrome Web Store under the “Blogging” "

'via Blog this'



Ok installed on my laptop. we will see how much it gets used.



I have Evernote and that does much of what I would like this to do.

Three years and back at

Okay it's been 3 1/2 years.

Raising three grandchildren and working full-time do eat up a lot of spare time. And frankly reading political blogs eats up a lot of time also.

So now the grandkids are ten, eight, and six years old. It makes a lot of difference in how closely they must be monitored. A month ago my wife started a new part-time job. She is now a lunch lady at the elementary school that the grandkids go to three blocks away. Three hours a day five days a week. A year and a half ago I went back to third shift. There are some definite pluses and minuses. The biggest minus is being tired. The biggest plus is some free time in the middle of the day. There is no one here from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM. I don't usually wake up until noon but that still gives me one and one half hours to do what I want.

I have been working on a couple of things. The first is learning a software program Called  FREECAD. I am working on learning it well enough that I can write a textbook on the subject. There is a very definite need for a good book. The online documentation is less than wonderful. It does not mention some of the worst gotchas. It would be nice to have a longer text that Has a fuller description.

I believe I've spent at least three weeks on this. I do understand the basics of the software. There are still a few things I need to work through.

Now for the hard part, writing. I have spent at least a week writing different chapters. I'm not thrilled with any of them. I have taken the last week off and been goofing off.

I will get back at it tomorrow. Last night I was poking around my old bookmarks. One of the things I found was blogger and these old blogs.

Today I am using Dragon speaking naturally and dictating directly into blogger. No background grandchildren and it's working fairly well. Seems Best when I speak three or four word bursts. Still needing to do "correct that" a lot.

For the rest of this post I'm not going to do any correcting. We will see if it's reasonable.

In three more months I will be 64 years old. I would like to retire as soon as possible. But I have an Excel spreadsheet that shows monthly income from my pension and Social Security and my wife's Social Security with different retirement dates. I like the numbers or dollars if I retire Two or six years from now. The only way that retiring now works is if I have a part-time job. Writing it could be a part-time job.

Okay one book is not a part-time job.  Need more books and more subjects.
Possibilities are:
TurboCAD,
geometric dimensioning and tolerancing,
building a CNC machining center,
building the electronics to control the CNC machining center,
printing and binding a hardcover book,.


well time time to close for today
question do I want to save this as  draft or post this. No one is reading and it's easier for me to find if I post. Warts and all.

Ok I posted and then came back and looked at this five hours later. Had at least ten strange spelling and word choices thrown in by Dragon Speaking Naturally. I believe from now on I will save to draft and correct and post later. The warts were embarrassing.

workflow notepad to blogger.

Are we connected now, looks like we are.

The last time that I worked on this was in 2007. At that time I was using a very convoluted workflow. OpenOffice to Notepad to blogger. I am not sure why I didn't want to go straight to blogger. And the draft that I have from them doesn't say why. It does say that Microsoft Word and OpenOffice both introduced strange formatting.

I am fairly sure that I did not have Dragon speaking naturally at that time. In the intervening five years I've used Dragon speaking naturally number nine, Windows speech recognition, Dragon speaking naturally number 10, Windows speech recognition again, and now Dragon speaking naturally number 11 on a more powerful computer. The last combination works without a lot of training of either me or the computer. It just works out-of-the-box.

The only problem at the moment are the two grandchildren talking in the background. The software keeps wanting me to say that again.

I am sitting out in the yard with my laptop. The Wi-Fi usually connects but not right now. So I'm dictating to Notepad we will see how it imports to blogger in a minute. Later I will go inside and try dictating direct into blogger. I also have a WordPress blog and we'll see what works best with it.

I need to use the simplest most direct workflow. My best time to write will be first thing in the morning before I go to work. The biggest problem that I see is that my wife is sleeping 15 feet away from my desk. The kitchen table would add another 15 feet and a doorway. This table out in the yard would definitely be far enough away that I would not be waking her up.

Well I see that I now have Internet access. I believe that I will connect to weblog and see how copy paste works.

Ended up coming inside to connect to the net. That may end up being the deciding factor on using Notepad. No formatting issues that I see.

new workflow

well I just got done posting a five-year-old draft The intervening years have seen some changes I now have Dragon speaking naturally version 11 installed on a HP laptop.  I'm now looking for simplest most direct route to posting.

my biggest problem at the moment is that I have three grandchildren out here helping. if they say something from 3 feet away Dragon wants me to repeat that. I'm also having to stop and correct them. Just now I had to tell the seven-year-old not climb a tree with a rope wrapped around his neck. Dictating straight into blogger seems to be working fairly well.

Dragon doesn't seem to want to capitalize initial word sentence. I think I will post this and see how it looks.

Work Flow

Possible work-flow:

Gedit/NotePad saved to G drive. reworked/edited. copy/past and himked/edited. Copy/paste into Blogger

Compose in Blogger. Save as draft. Rework/edit. Post.

Any one of the three will work, I need to try them and see which I actually do use. All work done in Blogger will be the simplest but I don't think I want to hold way rough thought fragments in blogger draft. Not sure that I will ever get back to them.

Right now I am writing using OpenOffice under Vista. Several things that I like about OpenOffice. Set font size to 18 where I can comfortably read it. I get to use the full screen instead of just a little 3 X4 inch window. I can work on, open, and save a document under both Vista and Ubuntu.

Four months ago when I tried doing the copy paste from OpenOffice to Blogger it showed a bunch of formating gobbledy gook. Had to paste into a text editor such as NotePad or Gedit and then copy paste from there. Yesterday when I was experimenting I could go direct from OpenOffice to Blogger no problems.him him

Trainee

Still on the writing kick. Only read three of my favorite political blogs last night. After thirty minutes of writing. Today no political blogs yet and it is 7:30 pm. Has to be some kind of a record for me.

This morning before work I spent reading about blogging and internet marketing. Went grocery shopping first thing after work. Then took Janice over to one of her Avon customers. We went scrounging for fire wood. Cooked and ate supper after unloading the wood.

Now it is time for my half hour of writing. A few more things about my day and then I think I will start another piece on some other topic.

I have worked for the last ten years as a machinist. It is a job were you must get good at working with the computers that control the lathes and machining centers. Also gauging (measuring) the parts, reading prints, making adjustments, and reading and understanding the machining programs. For the last three days I have been training someone else to run the lathes. The guy has been working with the machining centers for 4 years, so this is not all brand new to to him just a bunch of it. He is struggling with most every aspect of lathes except for deburring the parts. I imagine (hope) he is as frustrated as I am. There is a whole lot of repetition and not a lot of retention. I would be less concerned about his lack of progress except there are things on the machining centers that he still needs someone to walk him through every time after four years.

I need to think of this as a training exercise for me and a chance for me to up grade my skills as a trainer. One positive is that I believe he has no idea just how frustrated and worried I am. Second positive is that he does ask a lot of questions (again and again). Some people when they are not sure will just bull ahead and run a bunch of scrap before someone notices what they are doing and gets them stopped. Or crash a machine. Asking a lot of questions is a whole lot better. The worry on my part is because if he makes any bad mistakes I will be responsible for them. Questions and caution on his part are a good thing!

When I get done writing this evening I need to do some research on teaching & training.

Well no research was done was done. I went to bed instead. As usual I woke up about three times in the night. One of those times as I was drifting back to sleep I had some thoughts on some helps for the trainee.

I believe that controls on our machines and our machines are physically ten years old and the design of the Fanuc controls are fifteen years or older. They date from a time when memory and other resources of any computer were expensive and very limited. They will hold between ten and twenty programs for ten or twenty different parts. That is less than half of our parts and we occasionally need delete a program and download a new program. We have a floppy disk that holds all thirty of our lathe programs.

Error messages are very cryptic. 2015-A which you look up in a Fanuc manual. The paragraph may or may not help you. It has ten Hard keys off to the side of the screen. They have little pictograms on them that are very faded. Each key will bring up a related group of functions and screens. Under the screen there are the Soft keys and their function varies depending on what hard key function it is in. The screen above labels each key.

This written description would't be much help if you where trying to learn. I need to use PowerPoint to build a map of where things are at. My linux system has Open Office installed and I will try OO Presentation. We will see if I can come up with something that will help a trainee. Also see if I can get it into a web page, blog page.

It is five am and I have not been to a political blog for 36 hours, a current record which is about to end because I'm heading off to check my three favorites now.