EMC2/Linuxcnc running on Raspberry Pi

Hi guys.

If you're interested, I'm working on a 4 channel stepper board for the Pi. I have a prototype built, but the software side of things is kicking my butt. Any help would be very useful.

The prototype has 4 motor channels compatible with A4988 or DRV8825 stepsticks, 4 thermistor inputs, 4 spare analog input channels, 6 limit switch inputs and 3 high current outputs (for fan, bed and heater). The motor supply is separate, so you can run it up to 45V. The board also powers the Pi from the 12V input.

Oh, BTW, here's a pic:

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2015 02:06AM by mrwolfe.

Hi,
I want to take attention to our new product. It is Control System PiDiCNC build on Raspberry Pi 2 and LinuxCNC.
For now we have done with first board for stepper motors based on FPGA. It can drive 4 steppers motors by Pololu DRV8825 directly from
this board or by external stepper driver STEP/DIR type. Max speed is 750kHz. Other features are 5 binary inputs,
3 binary outputs (each can be configured as BIN/PWM/RC servo), 1 relay output, 1 analog output (0-10V, 12bit) and 12 leds. All functions
are available from LinuxCNC by our HAL components. In this moment we made only few boards for testing but commercial production comming soon.
Next boards what we are working on are Analog Board for servo motors, encoders and additional Analog and Binary IO board.

Few slides and video with additional information:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJOIYXu7SeI

Hm, I am rather inexperienced in this ARM stuff, but AFAIK, there is someone trying to port LinuxCNC to the Graperain 6818. This board has got a more modern processor than the Raspberry Pi and an UEXT connector that is compatible to a lot of Olimex extensions like temperature sensor boards etc. The whole design including the hardware is open source and they chose components that are easier to hand-solder than e.g. the ones on the RPi.
The OLinuXino is more expensive than the other systems, though.