An Electronic Leadscrew Controller using a Pi Pico

[AlanB]

Arduino Official Support for Pico

 

[WobblyHand]

I will have to go back and review that. Unfortunately my new install of RPIOS-64 bit is a bit rocky. The second monitor that has sound, isn't coming up, so I have no audio. Hmm, maybe I can use bluetooth.

Edit: that worked. I will have to try it once I get my 2nd monitor going.

 

[AlanB]

That may not be the best video on it, There are others. It's been out for about a year, so not new.

That posting disappeared and returned. Not sure what is going on there.

 

[WobblyHand]

I did load the MBed Raspberry Pi Pico board, but it was insufficient. I got compilation errors on blink. Think more something is required. You would think compilation would succeed independent of connecting the Pico, but it didn't. FWIW, on the RPI foundation area on Pico, yesterday afternoon, there was zero mention of Arduino. I find that curious. Might only be a slow update of documentation, but if it has been out for a year, then it would seem something hasn't been worked out just yet. Maybe commercial arrangements between the RPI foundation and Arduino?

 

[AlanB]

I suspect that it's up to Arduino to support their Pico software. Pi foundation already has their supported system. I haven't dug into it yet. June is busy for me, so this is low priority.

One of the demos I saw used blink, seemed to compile and load without problems.

 

[AlanB]

Pi Pico W is coming out, add WiFi and BT LE. Software for WiFi is there, the BT software will come out later.

 

[WobblyHand]

Seems the MBed doesn't work well. Adafruit is recommending the Esterhouser sp. toolkit still. $6 for a Pico W sounds pretty good, though. I have too much effort into my Teensy to want to change, but will consider it for other projects.

 

[AlanB]

I probably won't have need of a wifi on the electronic leadscrew but it will be useful for other projects. I'm still on other projects for awhile so not back to this quite yet.

 

[WobblyHand]

Mine is alive! Made all the hard brackets and mounted the stepper motor and rotary encoder. Cuts threads in steel and feeds. Does 25 impoerial threads and about 21 metric threads along with 8-9 feeds in both imperial and metric. How is yours coming along?

I am trying to make a PCB for mine. The rats nest and hodge-podge of boards operates, but is not suitable for shop use. Just too fragile, too many little wires and unprotected from chips or things. I haven't done PCB's in 30 years. Teaching myself KiCAD, which is a steep learning curve. (Reminds me of learning FreeCAD, another tool that has a cliff like learning experience.) Currently failing electrical check in my schematic, due some quirk in KiCAD. I connected the power and ground outputs of the Teensy to a buffer chip power inputs. KiCAD doesn't like that, although they show something very similar in their docs. I'll sort it out, eventually.

 

[AlanB]

I tried KiCad early on and it was really rough. I'll have to try it again sometime.