+Peter van der Walt @Andrew_Hodel @jlauer I think this is great the way the discussion is going. Particularly with some new info of @Dat_Chu and @Brad_Hopper . I mentioned in my original post about some other developments that I should mention since some were already covered.
I originally didn’t mention the BBB since the GRBLPi shield was designed for the RPi. I asked some questions in the BBB community about LinuxCNC, but never got an answer. I don’t have a BBB but from what I found the BBB has more on-board memory than the RPi so has more room to put LinuxCNC on board. Correct me if I am wrong, but if you have Cloud Software you don’t need a lot of on board memory. The BBB has 4 GB of memory while the RPi has 512 MB. So with the RPI you may not need as much on board memory. In addition, you can use a larger SD card to have more info available. For that matter, you can use a USB HDD to store additional Data.
With the BBB you can put LinuxCNC on it from Machinekit. LinuxCNC runs in Ubunto. The new version of FreeCAD also runs in Ubunto and has the capability to generate gcode, according to their website. But I don’t know if this will run on RPi, it should. There are a lot of capabilities with either board.
That brings into question the other boards running Linux with more capabilities of the two mentioned. The announced TRE, which is a BBB and Arduino, the UDOO, which is a RPi and Arduino, Or the PCDuino which accepts Arduino shields and comes pre-installed with Ubunto. And lets not forget the Galileo, which might be a bit outside of this discussion.
My original thought was an “all in one” controller so you could take a CNC router anywhere and just plug it in. With a control box on the CNC for the motor drivers, electrical hookup and a handheld controller with a screen, you could run everything. In fact, I saw such a device in another area, Gaming. On YouTube you can search for The Ben Heck Show and look for the Build Your Own Portable Raspberry Pi you will see what I mean. His device has a good size screen, a RPi, a joystick to jog the movements and buttons. This should work perfectly with an all in one CNC.
I hope you don’t think I am rambling on, but I think this is feasible and can be done with the work you guys are doing. Thank you for your contributions.
@Edmund_Betlinski it really depends on what the community wants and how much the community can afford (money and time). I personally prefer projects that have a clear technical advantage from a software point of view (being a software engineer and all).
Web-based tools are fantastic on this end because it allows extensibility in your wildest dream. The push for internet of things mean more connectivity between devices. With a server implemented (either the default Chilipeppr or a future beefier version that has more real-time tasks), you can use any front end be it your phone, your chromebook, your super fast laptop, your desktop, your super fast desktop. Heavy tasks can be performed in the cloud. Tool head/work detection and parameter auto-tuning can be done only with Big Data and Machine Learning.
To answer your question, no, you don’t need to run the host app (Chilipeppr on the pi/BBB), the app that install on the pi/BBB is tiny and take seconds to load comparing to LinuxCNC full fledge.