This post was last modified: 2017-08-24, 19:21 by MLXXXp.

the Serial port is quite nice to have

You don't need to use the serial port. D2, D3, D11, D13, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 are all free.

A1, A2, A3, A4, A5 are all free.

You're absolutely right. I did not know that they were compatible to use as digital pins. Makes total sense of course, was just stuck in a thought-pattern I guess.

It currently used one of these: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1750

It currently used one of these: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1750

How is it mounted/connected to the Arduino? (A photo would be great)

It currently used one of these: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1750

Some of the pins this shield uses are used by the SainSmart LCD shield (D4, D5, D6, D7, D8). If you wanted to add this shield to a standard LRTimelapse Pro-Timer, you would have to wire it separately to unused Arduino pins.

I like the 2 arduino method where they communicate. I might just buy this module to run my 3 steppers. It has an ios app and is ready to go and works with the intervolometer. It's like $450 though: https://flic.kr/p/WLAGXm

To be able to make a project like this on an Arduino Uno it would need to be hard-coded pretty hard, and it won't be very functional. By that I mean it will probably be hard to navigate on the low resolution screen, and it will be very hard to configure movement the way you want it. I've had a look at other open-source motion controllers and most use a bigger, faster Arduino - a bigger, better screen and some even shields with SD cards and ability to install whole OS's. In order to code all this we need to have a pretty good plan for the setup before we start. Honestly I think we (all interested) need to sit down in a chatroom for a while and discuss challenges and kinks + how to work around issues and what features to implement/ignore. I'm starting to believe it can be done, but how good it will be I am not certain about. That might however become clearer if we get to throw out ideas in a less formal form. A project like this will be an introduction to many new sides of hardware programming for me personally, and I've already learned a lot about controlling stepper motors just from our quite sloppy discussion in here today, so I'm gonna need to discuss a bit to be sure where it's going.

As for the "Synthetos gShield" I believe it needs support for grbl files that are used to trace the CNC path for your CNC machine. I'm not sure it can be used in this project (it would at least be out of my depth).

As for the "Synthetos gShield" I believe it needs support for grbl files

This shield is just the equivalent of three of the stepper boards I previously linked to. The Arduino provides direction and step pins for each motor. Software to control the motors is easy.

How about other more powerful boards?

I see someone has done similar. https://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-qds...r#pid34167