Sunday, December 29, 2013

Updated MachineKit Image Available

A new MachineKit image is now available.  While there are no dramatic changes with this release, pretty much everything got updated.  There's a new kernel (-bone33), the latest Debian (7.3), and continued updates to LinuxCNC.  One somewhat major change is switching from the xdm display manager to lightdm, which plays nice with consolekit so the shutdown/reboot buttons work, user-mode USB mounting works, etc.

There's no dramatic reason to update if your current system is working well.  This is primarily a baseline build I wanted to make available before I head off and start seriously working with the joints-axis code on the BeagleBone for controlling the non-Cartesian 3D printers I'm building (a Mini-Kossel-Pro mashup, and Nicholas Stewart's Wally and GUS Simpson).

Monday, December 2, 2013

New BeagleBone Cape Available

Alex Joni has finished up his bbb_parport cape and has them available for sale!

This cape provides support for up to 6 axis, and has an optional ADC for analog inputs.  There is a DB25 connector that should allow direct connection of an existing LPT based CNC machine to a BeagleBone.  If you're more interested in cutting metal than printing with plastic, this is the cape for you!

Great work, Alex!