Tool Enable - M15 - IOT Relay - & Breakout board (auto turn off/on router)

If you’re using the on board L1/L2 it’s worth noting there was a redesign between the revision 4 and revision 5 controllers. The rev 4 controller is similar to the Buildbotics design and they claim up to 10A of current for L1/L2 where as the rev 5 controller introduced a new design with a 0.05 ohm 3W sense resistor in series which if accurate would limit current to around 80mA max before risking letting the factory installed smoke out of the resistor (3W at 36vdc). One easy way you can tell the difference between them by the toggle power switch (rev 4) vs push power button (rev 5).

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Hey Derek,

…and did you see, the new Buildbotics controller got rid of them.

No, last time I looked at the schematics was about 2 months ago when I was mulling the idea of removing the stepper drivers and stealing the step and direction outputs to drive external drivers with closed loop steppers when the warranty was up, similar to the older buildbotics controllers that had the DB15 output… now I’ve decided on the path of an aftermarket controller down the road instead when time permits.

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Hey Derek,

“…when time permits”, this restriction I unfortunately experience too at the moment when I think of my CNC project :frowning:

I keep following the forum at least

I guess I wasn’t clear. I wondered whether I could control the router and the dust collector independently from Gcode. Some posts imply that it’s desirable to have a delay between powering
on the router and powering on the dust collector (or vice-versa). I found “vacuum switches” that provide such a delay, but their delay time is fixed. I thought that, if I have to use 2 relay boards anyway and if there’s a way to control them independently from Gcode (rather than in parallel from pin 15), I could implement whatever delays I wanted in Gcode. (I realize that the two relay boards might have to be different, because of the different electrical characteristics of the outputs, such as pin 15 and L1.).

I realized that I could use a relay board rather than an IoT relay; the IoT relay seemed like it might be simpler, if a bit of overkill.

Is this just pointing out that I couldn’t connect pin 15 directly to a bare relay, as distinct from a small board containing a relay, as shown in earlier posts in this thread (such as one from charleyntexas).

Hey Bob,

If you want the dust extraction to be triggered relatively from when the router is switched on by M3 command → ‘tool-enable’ (pin 15), you can do this with electronics that implement a delay. I do not know what is there on the market for consumers, as I am a person who usually is building my own things with electronic components, and in this case you are able to select the delay you like. I know today some people use an Arduino for this but I would say a NE555 is totally sufficient for this.

Just a note in case you might want to divert M7/M8 commands (workpiece coolant control) from their intended use in order to use L1/L2 outputs for turning on dust extraction, you got to make sure that these commands are inserted into your toolpath. Whether you achieve this by selecting ‘workpiece coolant on/off’ in your CAD/CAM software, or by manually editing your g-code toolpath, or by hacking the post processor, is the choice then.

The question is, are you a consumer, or are you an electrician/electrical engineer (or a consumer that is able to acquire some of an electrician’s knowledge and capabilities). In the first case you are forced to buy things you can simply plug together, in the second case you can wire together some components you’ve chosen. In both cases you have to read the specifications and the manuals of what you buy or intend to use carefully.

Yes, and the need to power the relay board with a power supply as shown above in this thread (whilst the ‘IoT’ type of relays on the first post get their power internally so you don’t have to worry about this)

I don’t know which relay charleyntexas referred to as he refers to a lot of things over time (you omit the link to the posting you mean), but you can only connect something directly to the pins of the AVR microcontroller if you are sure it never sucks more than 25 mA. Usually this condition is fulfilled if your relay is powered by a separate power supply and has a driver transistor in front of its relay coil. The pins of the AVR are used as triggers for drivers, not as relay drivers themselves. Using a dedicated power supply for driving relays (e.g. a DIN rail-mounted specimen as shown above in this thread) takes this into account as it provides power sufficient for driving a relay (and perhaps also for more than one). For example a bare Omron G4A relay wants 75 mA @ 12 V DC and 37.5 mA @ 24 V DC. Also when you run a CNC machine you easily have more than one relay that you might want to use.

Also if you use these relays available with some circuitry around them on small boards that I mentioned earlier, as I already said, they have optocouplers on it which means the relay-triggering circuit is galvanically isolated from what they switch, which is safe.

PS: Note: You might be interested in this:

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Actually, that’s exactly what the remote control board does. It delays the dust collector by 1 second (when in auto mode) This prevents startup surge spikes. You could create something yourself and trigger the dust collector with another channel through G-code. But that seems a bit overcomplicated for the usage.

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Hey Michel!

Hey Bob @crz383,

did I already mention today that I think the analog joystick (compared to the flimsy gamepad joystick buttons) alone is worth acquiring this Remote Control Panel for your machine?

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Yes, I realized that I’d have to make sure that the appropriate Gcode to control the dust collector was inserted, whichever way that’s done. (I presumed I’d have to do something similar to what’s done in Gcode to control pin 15. I haven’t necessarily decided to do this; it just seemed like a reasonable extension to the capability of controlling the router from Gcode and I wanted to know if it was feasible.)

The posts by charleyntexas that I was referring to were posts #21 and #26 above in this thread. (They’re fairly long, with pictures; so I didn’t want to quote them.)

I’m not an electrician, but I have done a lot of electrical work. (For example, rather than cutting the relay board into the router power cable, as charleyntexas says in his post, I’d wire the relay board to control a dual receptacle, into which the router can be plugged.) I’m also not an electrical engineer; but I do have some electronics knowledge, a lot of it gained by osmosis from working with electrical engineers as a software engineer.

I had previously read satoer’s post on his remote control panel and thought it was brilliant. If it was still available, I’d definitely get one. However, I have to get a machine up and running and gain some reasonable familiarly with the hardware and software, before I’d try something like that.

When I read the post about your remote control panel (likely several months ago), it seemed as if you had made only a few and they were all gone. But I see from your post that taking orders for more. I’ll definitely get one.

Hey Bob,

OT

it seems you are not familiar with the discourse.org forum software. Did you not take the opportunity to make the advanced tutorial that the discobot robot offered?

You can do this by sending a message to @discobot start advanced tutorial or @discobot start tutorial if you omitted the simpler start tutorial.

To explain how quoting in this forum works: First, you might have noticed that if you mark a short passage in someone’s posting, you’ll see a little grey field with “quote” in it popping up. If you click on this, you get this passage quoted in your reply, and the correct attribution to author, post and thread is integrated automatically, and secondly, if you post a reply with a quoting made this way, the reader will see a little symbol beside the quoting reference which allows him to unfold the entire posting that you referenced - without having you to quote it in its entirety! So you don’t need to quote a whole posting, but if you only had quoted one single word of the posting you mean, then I, the reader, would be able to read what you referred to with a single click.

Also you see the little symbol that looks like two chain links under every posting? This is a second way to refer to the post you’re reading, it can copy its URL into your clipboard.

An update to this older thread. If you have a Makita router and are running the 1.09 firmware you do not need to chose the PWM spindle, in fact it won’t work. Use the new Makita router tool selection. I learned that today, the hard way. :slight_smile:

I also learned something else that may help people. If you have a Fein Turbo II (and I assume this is true for the Turbo I and the Festool dust collection products that turn on with a tool) you can use the DLI IoT Relay device (discussed elsewhere in this thread) plugged in to the dust collector. Although it is only rated for 12Amps, if you do it this way it is only the router that is drawing upon it. If you instead plug it in to the wall and the dust collector and router in to it the you are at 15.5Amps, well over capacity. The Fein (etc) will power the IoT relay, when the relay turns on the router the extra current draw will cause the dust collector to come on. Slick solution.

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Note that the 25 ma is the Absolute Maximum Rating for these pins; i.e., the level above which the chip may be damaged or long-term reliability. They should never used at this level in a design. Maximum recommended design level is 20 ma, but the voltage level won’t be very high. For instance, if you draw 8 ma out of a logic high output, the chip will produce a minimum voltage of 2.6V (2.9V typical). The board has a 68 ohm resistor in series with it, so drawing 8 ma out of it could produce a voltage level as low as 2.05 volts. Ensure whatever you hook these pins up to is a high impedance load that needs little current.

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That’s correct; switching the neutral is a potential shock hazard. That’s why in circuits covered by the Electrical Code, it is a violation to switch the neutral unless the hot line(s) are also switched.

The concern is if a fault develops in the router that shorts the internal wiring to the case, even with the router switched “off”, the user can be shocked by touching the router if they are somehow grounded; e.g., standing barefoot on a concrete floor, touching grounded metal with the other hand, etc. You can argue that the router is double-insulated (which is why UL lets them get away with no including an equipment grounding wire in the cord), but why take the risk?

Hoping someone can help with my issue. I am using a Makita Router and Dust collector

I added the IOT relay and breakout board.

Used pin 15 and 25

Changed to PWN spindle and when I enter M3 S1 I get no response. If I change back to Makita router the M3 S1 command works and the DC and router starts up when play is selected.

My issue is how do I command the router and DC to turn off when the file is complete? I tried to enter the M5 command in the MDI tab but nothing turns off.

I did the firmware update today to V1.0.9

Hey Robert,

“Makita Router” is a new tool-type as of 1.0.9. With older versions you had to choose “PWM Spindle”.

Normally the g-code program should take care of this. You could try to look at the settings in your CAM software / post processor. But you can add G-Code commands in the Onefinity Controller to be executed at program end in the ‘program-end’ field of General Configuration Tab.

Also normally after program end the controller should enable MDI mode again. Are you sure your program really ended?

Welcome to the forum!

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I tried a different file this morning to see if it would turn off once complete with no luck. I’m using the invebtables program to to build the file and then downloading the G code to a thumb drive.

In the MDI tab I added M3 S1 and also the M5 command but still no luck with shutting down once the cut is complete.

Hey Robert,

do you mean Easel? Did you set it up according to this?

Normally if a g-code program sends out M3 and your router/dust collector on your IoT relay switches on as per your wiring on ‘tool-enable’ pin 15, it should be shut off at the end by M5 (or better said by M2 which should include M5).

Does your router/dust collector switch on with M3, and off with M5, when NO g-code program is running, just by entering these commands into the MDI field of the Onefinity Controller?

In easel, under machine set up. FYI, I am using easel pro, this may not apply to easel “free”.
Set up the machine type to Onefinity then your machine. Then go to edit your machine. You will then see a spindle controlled by field which you can set to manual or hardware, set to hardware. Also set spindle field to Makita or spindle as appropriate. That should set the correct codes for the OF to start/stop the spindle.

I recently received my 1F and could not get the pin 15 outputs to act anything like they should, they were erratic at best and didn’t show any kind of standard operation even after following everything recommended in this post. After contacting 1F tech support (no help at all because the subject line mentioned “IOT relay”), I re-imaged the SD card, reconfigured the “Tool” and all is working fine with one caveat, I have to use M3 S100 the first time to activate the trigger signal, afterward, I can just use the M3 command. My “Tool” is set to “Makita, etc” with lo-hi for the enable.

Hope this helps,
DizzyG