I am sad to report that I will be ordering a new controller for my Altmill. The mill first arrived in October 2024 and the controller was replaced under warranty once. It is unfortunately well out of warranty now. I am limping along with the old controller for now but it appears to be slowly failing.
Here is what is happening:
As reported before, there have been occasions when I couldn’t get the controller on line. Neither USB nor Ethernet connections would get me going. After many reboots of the gControl computer and the SLB-EXT, eventually connectivity was restored. I tend to leave my mill powered up 24/7/365 but I use it sporadically (mainly because starting up takes an eternity). There are many days with no activity and then a bunch of days where the mill is used quite a bit. After the experience with the inability to connect the gControl with the mill, I noticed that when the mill was not being used for a few days, I would find that it had gone off line (btw, this was never noticed in the early days). I would struggle to get it back on line but I would always eventually succeed.
Well, I am now at a stage where the mill goes off line overnight or even after a few hours of not being used. I am also no longer able to connect via Ethernet but I can establish a connection with USB after farting around with things (power cycling the controller). Anyhow, before the thing fails completely on me, I will order a new controller.
I do not know if there is any relation between the slow death of the controller and the various other odd things I have been seeing.
This post is offered for information purposes only in case someone experiences the same or similar issues.
Edit: If the good folks at Sienci Labs happen to read this, The old controller will be available (for some sort of credit for future purchases) to you if you wish to obtain it for a failure analysis.
@Jens What are the symptoms of the board going offline? I assume gSender shows a disconnected status. But is anything on the board indicating it’s offline?
Here’s a thought. Next time it goes “offline”, close gSender and then try to telnet to the board? Maybe the problem is elsewhere.
And if I were you, I’d raise a ticket with Sienci. Maybe they’ll replace it even though it’s out of warranty. Especially if they know there is an issue with a particular batch.
Symptoms of going off-line … I move the mouse to un-blank the computer and gSender reports the mill as disconnected. I have not (yet) seen the mill disconnecting while I am using it.
I have not looked at the board looking for any off-line indication (nor would I know what to look for)
I am not sure how I would connect to the mill when it is in the disconnected state.
I have added a note to my post that the controller is available to Sienci Labs for a failure analysis for a credit of some sort. I do not wish to raise a ticket because I believe the first failure happened shortly after warranty expiration and Sienci replaced the controller with no fuss whatsoever. With the controller being well over a year old, it doesn’t feel right to me to raise a ticket. Offering the old controller for failure analysis gives them the option to replace it if they feel they should.
Meh! As my old boss used to say, “the worst thing that can happen is they say no”
You looked at power saving mode on the computer? Network card is configured to never go offline ? I believe you configured your PC to blank the screen, even when gSender is open. Could that have affected something else ?
No, it is not an issue with power saving mode … a reboot of the gControl does not result in any change.
Quite frankly, I am getting quite tired of messing around with things. I just want things to work. I am more than happy to throw some money at it to get the issue solved.
The situation this morning:
Controller is disconnected, connecting via Ethernet does not work, Connecting via USB works, the status lights on the Ethernet port are not active.
I power cycled the controller and the gControl computer
Now neither USB nor Ethernet connections work.
BTW, when I attempt to connect via Ethernet, there is no error message but the left top message goes back to the ‘connect to CNC’ message. If I try to connect with USB (after the reboot), I get an ‘unable to connect’ message instead of the ‘connect’ prompt.
Power cycling the controller allows connecting via USB but Ethernet is borked.
@Jens This is way out of my competence level, but if you don’t mind, I have a question specifically related to the ethernet connection. Are you connecting through a router or have you set a static IP address for the SLB?
@Jens what are the chances of having a faulty usb cable AND a faulty cat5 cable? If the ethernet light doesn’t light up, that’s the easiest thing to change. Otherwise, it could very well be your board. Maybe flashing the latest firmware?
Direct connection between gControl and SLB-EXT
I have not verified the IP address assigned so I will double check that but it was working the other day so unless there was a hiccup with the gControl computer, nothing should have changed.
Zero chance … both connections worked the other day and the USB connection re-established itself after I power cycled the controller.
BTW, the gControl computer sees both the Ethernet port as well as the USB port. I would think that if a cable was defective then the matching port would not show up in gSender.
@Jens Before going the perhaps-pricey route of replacing the EXT, you may want to try connecting to it via another PC. I am assuming that you were connecting before you got the gControl. If not, I can appreciate why this may not be a very practical option.
Hooked up a Linux laptop via USB and it connected on gSender startup (on the gControl computer it does NOT start automatically …possibly because both USB and Ethernet are connected)
Hooked up the same Linux box via Ethernet - it sees the port but fails to connect.
Under the heading of ‘WTF’, I hooked the Ethernet cable back to the gControl computer and now I have port lights flashing and connection via Ethernet works again.
On Linux did you try launching it from a terminal so you can see if there is an error when you try to connect with Ethernet. I know on my system I couldn’t connect gSender until I added myself to the dialout group. I’ve never tried the Ethernet so I don’t know much about that in particular. It could also be a firewall issue if your running one.
I was curious about this as well. Is it just slow to boot the gControl? Also I don’t know if it’s still an issue but gSender used to take forever to start because of some Electron problem on Windows. I like the form factor of the gControl but it’s specs are pretty low IMHO.
@Jens Has this always been the case? Just a WAG, but maybe the controller doesn’t play nice when both are connected, especially if you have it configured to automatically connect. It might be bouncing between the two.
Not really related to your issue but my home router had both 2.4ghz and 5ghz sharing the same SSID. Windows kept disconnecting and bouncing from one to the other. It took me a while to figure out but each frequency now has its own SSID and my network is working fine. For the sake of convenience, things sometimes don’t work all that well.
I have had both USB and Ethernet connected for a long time. It has never been an issue … but as I said, I left the box on 24/7/365 so I can’t really say if, on startup, it used to auto connect (I believe it did but am not certain)
gSender starts up MUCH faster on Linux but having said that, I have 1.4.10 installed on the Linux computer and 1.5.3 on gControl. Also, my laptop probably has 10 times or more the computing power of the gControl so it isn’t really a fair comparison.
gControl is marginal at best (but usable), even with upgraded memory. I have only laptops available and they pump a lot of air through the computer for cooling - totally unsuitable for a dusty environment. I also wanted to try out a touch screen. With gControl I got a sealed computer and touch screen with marginal performance. So far I have resisted converting it to Linux.
Under most circumstances the gControl is perfectly fine except for issues with gSender (IMHO). I have not had an issue with processing speed while actually cutting. It’s when it stops cutting that it has problems (up to about 30 second intermittent delay) and memory leaks when loading a cutting file slowing things down after a few loads. Well, there is the bit about queuing instructions that can’t be executed in a timely manner but I don’t know if that is caused by gSender or gControl.
I would install a current version of gSender on my Linux laptop but I am absolutely paranoid about getting dust in the works on a computer that actually causes blisters on the skin because it runs so hot. I am not kidding on the blisters either … it takes maybe 5 minutes of contact and then a few hours later blisters appear. FWIW, it’s a ‘Framework’ computer.
Since my post I looked at the resources for the gControl and realized it’s a sealed unit and passively cooled which is a big plus for in the shop. I suspected as much when I noticed the fins on the back in the store pics. I didn’t know you had upgraded the memory. The 8 gig had me a bit concerned as Windows tends to use quite a bit but I also have never use the IoT version. I read up on it a bit and it seems like it might be less bloated with fewer background services than the regular version.
My mill is in an enclosure but the PC still needs blowing out on a regular basis. I wouldn’t risk a laptop either. I just have old PC’s from upgrading over the years so that’s what I use.
Also I just rebuilt my LongMill PC and I had my first disconnect issues ever. I had routed the cables differently and as soon as I separated the USB cable from everything else it was fixed.
Most people don’t realize USB cables are like the Wild West especially when purchased from Amazon. I’ve seen tests that have shown the shielding not even connected to the connectors so was worthless. Very detailed article below about USB cable shielding: