Originally shared by Mat Helm
Got a little Arduino action goin’ here today…
One bad driver though, so 3 out of 4 on the China Drivers…
The first challenge was figuring out which way the little drivers plugged into the shield. Turns out there’s a little “EN” (as in ENable) next to one of the corner pins on the little driver board (underside). There is also a EN next to the shield pin hole next to the “-” (negative pin) side of the capacitor.
Then onto loading GRBL onto the Arduino itself. First download the/a (many versions listed, older to newer). You must use one that matches your version of Arduino. (mine was https://github.com/downloads/grbl/grbl/grbl_v0_8a_edge_328p_16mhz_9600_build20120310.hex )
Then download Xloader here: http://xloader.russemotto.com/ To load the GRBL file you downloaded, onto your Arduino. It’s a simple program that you run directly from whatever folder you unzipped it in. Browse for the GRBL file, chose the correct version of arduino, chose the correct COM port and leave the Baud rate at whatever it is ( showed 115200 when I used it, even though I’ve always had it set at 9600 in everything else, worked fine).
Then the instructions say to verify that GRBL is loaded using Putty, which can be found here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html I used the first one listed under “For Windows on Intel x86” “putty.exe ( http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe ). Change the “Connection type” to “Serial”, then change the COM number to the correct one for your setup, and click the “Open” button. A terminal type window should open saying “Grbl” (a long with the version I think) and " $ to dump current settings”. I just closed the window after this as all I needed was for it to read Grbl from the arduino to verify that it was loaded.
Then the hard part for me. The Universal G Code Sender. Which can be found here, down the page a bit under “Downloads”: https://github.com/grbl/Universal-G-Code-Sender
The actual files:
32-bit: http://bit.ly/Xz4U1R
64-bit: http://bit.ly/SGKfMN
Now the thing that made this hard for me was for one, I didn’t have Java installed, and this is a Java program so… For two, even after I installed Java ( http://www.java.com ), windows still did not know what to do with the JAR file. so…
Go to start>right click computer>properties>Advanced System Settings>and press Environemental Variables on the bottom.
Then go to new>and name it “Path”
Then on the 2nd line, paste in your target to Java’s bin. (where java.exe is located)
E.G. (mine) C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\bin
and of course right clicking the file and choosing “Open with”. It still would not open the program window. I’m running Windows Vista 64bit here. So I don’t know if any of the above beyond installing jave help at all, but I finally downloaded and used the 32bit version of the Universal G Code Sender, and it worked fine. Keep in mind that every time I double clicked the program before, it loaded into memory. So I had to open the Task Manager ( right click the taskbar and chose “Task Manager”) and find all the java “processes” and end them.
It’s pretty easy from that point. Keeping in mind that according to the instructions on that first link, Do not power the shield with a stepper driver plugged in without a stepper motor hooked to it. It also says (and I did) to test each axis individually with a single driver. The first of mine (driver) was bad ( maybe I killed it, but don’t know how I would have done that). So tried a second one, (unhooking negative wire from power supply and the USB from the arduino until driver was plugged into socket) and it worked. Repeated for the other 3 axis, and tried the other 2 drivers on the last one (doing the unhooking of wires between each).
Back to the Universal G Code Sender, Select correct com port and click “Open”. You should get the same read out in the bottom right window as you did with the putty program (which makes me wonder why it was needed at all). Click the “Enable Arrow Key Movement” check box in the bottom left section, turn on your power supply if you haven’t already, and click the correct axis button that your driver and stepper are connected to… Hopefully you’ll get the same result I did on my second driver… 