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Communicating with OquamLink

Finding the USB portLink

First you need to find which USB port your X-Controller board is connected to.

To do so, you can use dmesg:

  1. make sure the USB cable from the X-Controller board is unplugged from your computer
  2. run dmesg -w in a terminal
  3. connect the usb to your computer and see something like: 
    [42063.157605] usb 1-2: new full-speed USB device number 7 using xhci_hcd
[42063.313985] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001, bcdDevice= 6.00
[42063.313991] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[42063.313995] usb 1-2: Product: X-Controller
[42063.313997] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Inventables
[42063.314000] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: XCONTROLLER6CFIRF
[42063.317878] ftdi_sio 1-2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[42063.317954] usb 1-2: Detected FT232RL
[42063.318915] usb 1-2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

Important

The important info here is ttyUSB0!

Serial connectionLink

With picocomLink

Then you can use picocom to connect to the board:

picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 --omap crcrlf --echo

Note

-b 115200 is the baud rate of the connection, read the picocom man page for more info. --omap crcrlf is mapping the serial output from CR to CR+LF. --echo allows you to see what you are typing.

Once connected you should see something like:

picocom v3.1

port is        : /dev/ttyUSB0
flowcontrol    : none
baudrate is    : 115200
parity is      : none
databits are   : 8
stopbits are   : 1
escape is      : C-a
local echo is  : yes
noinit is      : no
noreset is     : no
hangup is      : no
nolock is      : no
send_cmd is    : sz -vv
receive_cmd is : rz -vv -E
imap is        : 
omap is        : crcrlf,
emap is        : crcrlf,delbs,
logfile is     : none
initstring     : none
exit_after is  : not set
exit is        : no

Type [C-a] [C-h] to see available commands
Terminal ready

This mean you now have access to a Oquam terminal to communicate, notably send instructions, to the CNC!

With the serial monitor of the Arduino IDELink

Open the Arduino IDE, go to Tools > Serial Monitor or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+M. Do not forget to select Both NL & CR instead of the default Newline.

TroubleshootingLink

Serial access deniedLink

If you get an error about permission access:

  1. Check in what groups you are with: 

    groups ${USER}

  2. If you are not in dialout: 

    sudo gpasswd --add ${USER} dialout

  3. Then log out and back in to see changes!