I have a smoothieboard, CNC/laser, that works well using Lightburn but not when using gSender. On initiating g Sender all axes lock when I power up. GSender shows this as an unknown error. Reverting to Lightburn, everything works as it should. With rev 1.5.1 I don’t see a selection tab for other types of controller and nothing else I can try fixes this issue.
Can anyone help?
Hi Lyles,
Welcome to the playground.
It seems the smoothieboard is a 32 bit controller. I don’t know that this means that it uses grblhall or simple grbl but maybe you can try and connect to your board via either to see if that loosens things up?
that board uses an ARM controller, theoretically it should be supported
if you connect over usb select GRBL
if you connect over ethernet select GRBLHAL in the settings
Thanks for the advice. I’m having no success with version 1.5.1. Just tried the newest version on a Windows machine and that does not work either. It connects to Smoothieboard and goes into Idle state, but no commands are received on the Smoothie. Currently set to Generic CNC and GRBL, I have tried most other combinations with no change. Any additional suggestions?
When you’re connecting in LightBurn is it recognizing your board firmware as Smoothieboard? If so then it’s possible they’ve built in more compatibility for your firmware than we have.
Otherwise, could you share either a diagnostic file after you try connecting or a copy of the console output form the console tab on the main carve page and that might give us a better understanding of where it’s getting stuck up
Thanks for your continued interest. LightBurn does indeed recognize my board firmware as Smoothieboard, as does UGS, bCNC and Smoopi. I’m just attracted to the functionality you now have in gSender and your continued commitment to maintaining it.
I captured gSender data from the Console, as requested but don’t know how to append to this. However, what is reported is as follows:
With USB connected, gSender initiates in the Disconnected state. Commanded to connect, the Console shows:
gSender -[Grbl]
Connected to COM3 at a baud rate of 115,200
ALARM: abort during cycle
After clearing the alarm:
ok
error: Invalid statement
The last line then continues to repeat, in red, at about 2Hz.
Attempting to issue a jog X command:
feeder $J = G21 G91 X5 F3000
error bad axis G
ok ignored
Then resumes:
error: Invalid statement
And continues to repeat this.
@lylesgold roger that, yes this is what I figured would happen
Unfortunately we’ve mostly focused on making gSender compatible for the original grbl firmware and grblHAL, and because the Smoothieboard firmware is too far different from that it’s not able to connect to your board successfully. This isn’t a bug, this is pretty much expected. If you have any coding chops and want to contribute to the open source code then we’d happily accept any contributions, otherwise for now it seems like it won’t work
Thanks for your consideration, it’s as I expected also. As to my software skills, I’m 10 years into retirement and they’re obsolete. Maybe someone else will take take an interest…