Will there ever be a new offering of the Buildbotics controller? I have an original woodworker and still using version 1.09. It has worked very well for me with just a few minor glitches. It is getting older now and is obviously slow. I think it’s about time us original customers get a fresh update of this controller. It seems all the talk is on the Masso and the Elite. Please don’t forget about the original folks that helped you get here Onefinity. I’m feeling a little left out in the cold 
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Hey JFab,
in what respect is it slow?
Its an old raspberry pi now and as with all computers run slow as compared to brand new. I build PC’s and just waiting for them to give us old customers an upgrade route, Make sense now?
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Hey JFab,
the current Raspberry Pi 3B is already 64-bit capable, however Buildbotics and Onefinity run a 32-bit Raspbian of 2017 on it.
Onefinity said to work on a 2.0 firmware that will run on Raspberry Pi 3 and Raspberry Pi 4.
So, you could build a Onefinity Controller from the sources on a recent Raspberry Pi 4 board and use a recent Raspberry Pi OS SD card image as base. Such a recent Raspberry Pi OS SD card image also boots fine on the original Raspberry Pi 3B inside your Onefinity Controller (I tested that). So if you build the onefinity-firmware from the souces, as it would be a switch to a 64-bit operating system, you would already have a faster system, even without exchanging the Raspberry Pi.
By the way, I don’t think that you would be able to mill your toolpaths faster with a faster Raspberry Pi or a faster Raspberry Pi OS installed, as it is the bit, the spindle and the workpiece material that limits the speed of operation. If you want to mill projects faster, you would rather buy a more powerful spindle.
You did not really answer my question. I think the parsing step of the uploaded g-code could run faster with a faster hardware or faster operating system, but I don’t know if this really does matter to everyone.
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Here’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth…
Is something wrong with your system? I don’t know what you mean by yours being slow as my buildbotics is just as fast now as it was when I booted it 3+ years ago.
In fact my cuts are actually much faster now as I’ve gotten better with VCarve as I dwelve into the finer points of it and have learned many tricks to cut down on my lines of gcode, (professionally I was spoiled with ArtiosCAD!), plus dialing in the feeds and speeds of my bits.
Along with keeping everything clean, oiled and in tip top shape, to quote an old saying, I’m as happy as a clam!
Pony
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Wow I really appreciate everybody’s efforts in responding to my very
simple question. My system is old and PC 's come and go so do raspberry pies. I just hope Onefinity Comes up with something new for us old school customers. I have no plans, reasons or funds to upgrade to the Masso. This is a part-time hobby for me. I rebuild and replace my PCs about every five years or less and I am just Simply wondering if they are going to come up with a new controller for us original customers. Unless anybody on the forum knows the exact answer to this I would expect Onefinity to respond. Better yet I think I’ll call them tomorrow and ask which would’ve been much easier in the first place I think. Thank you for all your replies.
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There’s no need to call. If we ever release something in the future, we will announce it.
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@JFab, since you are so accustomed to building PC’s, why not build your own PC based controller? That’s the beauty of the Onefinity hardware, it’s a stand-alone machine that does not operate on or require a proprietary controller. So there’s no need to wait for them to give you an upgrade path when you can make your own. I’m running a Centroid Acorn controller feeding into a Gecko G540 stepper driver. The Acorn board connects to a PC that runs a dedicated CAM program for the Acorn. It’s been an extremely stable and fast system at a very reasonable price. Going this route, you would be losing stall homing and either need to home manually or install switches. I do stall homing in a sense on my machine. I jog to home position and gently bump the hard-stops. It only needs to be rehomed in the event of a crash or inadvertent manual movement of an axis while not powered up.
For even cheaper, you could hook up an OpenBuilds X32 controller which plugs via USB cable to a host computer running the OpenBuilds controller software (free). I have this setup on my previous CNC. This also seems to be a very quick & stable controller & software.
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Thank you so much for your comments! I will keep that in mind. I was just hoping Onefinity Would have an offering that’s all. I’m a busy guy like the rest of us and I really don’t have the time as I mentioned this is a part-time hobby for me. it 's tax time! UGH!
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I am considering the subject Closed as I am calling 1F about it.
Do you have any plans or are you working on anything currently for this style controller?.
Hey JFab,
They answered this question here and here. You don’t click on the links I provide, do you?
Replacing a computer that does its work well makes no sense. It can introduce new unknown bugs and security issues. I run a internet router that I’ve set up myself that works this way for over twenty years with a motherboard of 1994 and a WD caviar hard disk of that age too. Hard disks today are not what they used to be. A workstation with full of ECC RAM of 2008 still works for many purposes. I prefer operating systems that run on old hardware like Devuan and sometimes I teach people on how to set them up because this makes you save a lot of money. Okay, for my main workstation I run a recent Xeon with full ECC RAM but I have a reason to do this. But on many other systems, I run old hardware because there is no reason to replace them. I run many computers for specific purposes with mainboards of the 1990s and 2000s and they run absolutely fine.
Still, you did not answer my question. What in the process of loading and running a toolpath on the Onefinity Controller is too slow for you?
Replacing a computer just because it is five years old is nonsense. I think maybe you come from the need to install a new windoze version every five years? But there is no windoze on the Onefinity Controller, it has an unixoid OS.
I have not changed the Operating system I use on my workstation and production notebooks since 1994, just always make all upgrades and switched from Debian to Devuan when Debian forced you to switch to systemd, but it is still the same operating system (Systemd is not a daemon, it’s a disease).
Do you want two reasons for wanting a better Raspberry Pi in the Onefinity Controller? I give you two:
- Parsing the uploaded g-code file and generating the helper files could be faster
- With a Rasberry Pi that has 3D graphics acceleration support and enough RAM, you could see the 3D toolpath simulation on a display connected to the Onefinity Controller (and you would no more be forced to use a remote computer with 3D graphics acceleration and drivers to see it).
But since you did mention none of these two, It seems to me that you want to upgrade the Raspberry Pi just for upgrading something, without need.
Raspberry Pi Ltd. writes:
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B will remain in production until at least January 2028
Not to beat a dead horse but industrial computers are not like personal computers. I work on semiconductor manufacturing equipment that makes state of the art chips. Yet the computing power of these tools is over 30 years old. They did come up with a newer processor but to do so it required lots of changes that just didn’t offer a ROI.
In fact some of these tools still use a 3 1/2" floppy drive. There are solid state upgrades but the limitation is the software can only recognize 1.44MB. Unlike the consumer world, in industrial applications it usually comes down to two things. Does it work as required? Also can we still get replacement parts for it? If the answer is yes to both of those questions then it’s unlikely that anyone will bother with making an upgrade.
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Hey Alex,
I agree. However regarding the OS, if it’s a device that connects to a network, and the OS offers regular upgrades, it would be good to follow the upgrades (which neither Buildbotics nor Onefinity does) to avoid that older security issues remain unclosed. But, unfortunately, upgrading the OS on Onefinity Controller is not possible, but…
This would not require exchanging any hardware. I would suggest to the original poster to do exactly this.
We don’t share future roadmaps publicly.
Again, no need to call about this.
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My controller has started to react slowly to downloading files to carve or burn. Some times painfully slow, waiting 20 minutes or so for the file to download and thats from a memory stick not over wifi.
Not sure why this is. I delete files after I use them from the controller.
1 file is permanently loaded and I can’t delete that file.