Anyone Have Experience Connecting a MPG to LinuxCNC?

Most of the ones advertised say they work with LinuxCNC, have you tried installing the XHC-WHB04B-6 driver


There's some YouTube videos out there too.

John
 
I've purchased a MPG for my LinuxCNC mill but I haven't installed it yet. I will let you know when I do. The one I got is all "discrete" signals. No USB, no bluetooth. It has an open collector encoder output and all the switches and buttons are dry contact. This gives me the most flexibility. Loading drivers in Linux isn't so straightforward. Nothing about LinuxCNC is straightforward. I do not want to fight that fight. If I have enough IO on my Mesa board I'll wire it straight in. If not, I'll use an arduino or a PLC to accept the MPG signals and relay them to LinuxCNC over serial or something, maybe keyboard emulator.

What kind of controller are you using? Mesa boards? Some serial BOB? How much open i/o do you have?
 
I haven't purchased anything yet. I was looking for advice and past experiences.

I did see that this one by vistacnc has a detailed installation guide and drivers for LinuxCNC. I might give it a try.
 
I have the P4-S from VistaCNC. Quite simple, I just followed the directions that they provide for installing on LinuxCNC. It works great, and is so much more convenient than a keyboard.

 
lustenaderj: I talked to VistaCNC and they said that I would need to update the firmware in the MPG for LinuxCNC and then install the drivers on the motherboard. Sounded easy enough.

strantor: I have a motherboard with built-in parallel port connected to a BoB. Nothing fancy. Straightforward.
 
I just placed the order for the P2-S MPG from VistaCNC. They said I need to upgrade the pendant firmware to LinuxCNC and install a driver on the PC.

Hope all this goes well!
 
So, I updated the firmware in the pendant and installed the needed drivers on the PC. All works well, except the PC won't boot with the pendant plugged into the USB port. If I unplug the pendant, boot up, then plug in the pendant, it works fine.

Any ideas?
 
So, I updated the firmware in the pendant and installed the needed drivers on the PC. All works well, except the PC won't boot with the pendant plugged into the USB port. If I unplug the pendant, boot up, then plug in the pendant, it works fine.

Any ideas?
what does it say on the screen where it fails to boot?
 
Change you boot order in BIOS
 
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