Generic Control Board Not Connecting to gSender - Any Tips?

gSender ❓ Question
1

Good afternoon everybody,

I have a peculiar one for you all. I bought a cheap motion control board, often referred to as the “Red Board.” It’s a cheap one for Mach 3 that’s often sold in those inexpensive stepper kits (linked below). I read an article about adding a 4-pin header to the board and using an ST Link USB adapter to flash it with grblHal (it’s an STM32 chip on the motion control board). Compiled some firmware with the GrblHal Web Builder and tried it out. I was excited to see it seems to have worked with the recommended ioSender software the article mentioned. I was able to see the firmware listed in the console and send gcode commands to get the steppers turning.

My ultimate hope & dream is to use it with gSender. That said, when I go into gSender, it just says “Connecting” in the top left corner, but it never connects. I know there’s a need to cycle the e-stop button when connecting, but I thought it would connect first and then show an alarm to cycle the e-stop. I do have two pins shorted together on the board with a jumper that’s supposed to accomplish this for me, so I’m not sure what else to do.

Any ideas on how I might get this thing to connect?

The board: Wouldn’t let me link it, but if you type “Red Board” into Google, it’s the little square red one with an eagle on it. Model number BSMCE04U-PP

The article: Wouldn’t let me link this either, but if you Google, “embedded press grbl on red board,” it should be the first Word Press result.

2

Hey Tim,

I am in no possition to help for I am not a wiz like you are. The one thing I can do is point you to this here page where sienci offers to look into making gsender available to more and more controllers.
They essential ask you to help them help you. Maybe something to look into?

afbeelding
afbeelding1220×863 130 KB

Found here:

I know your problem is not a port not found, or it does not seem like that, but it sure as hell aint connecting either.

Worth a shot?

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3

Well, I’ve been banging my head against a wall trying to figure this out, but I finally got it, ha! I was changing the baud rate, reloading firmware, adjusting various settings, but nothing was working. I finally realized there was a non-factory setting in gsender ticked for reconnecting automatically to the last machine it had connected to. Out of desperation, I tried turning that off and reconnecting the board. Finally the “Connecting…” disappeared and I could see an option to connect to Com 4. Loaded a gcode file, hit start, and all of the steppers fired up on my desk to run the job, woohoo!

I’m probably a little too excited that this finally worked, but after spending so much time troubleshooting the firmware, stepper drivers, and the steppers themselves to get everything running smoothly, I was pretty bummed not to be able to use the software that drew me to Grbl in the first place. So stoked I can finally used gSender:).

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