ioSenderV2 (re)connect

One of the first features of ioSenderV2 you will probably see is Connect. You find it in the upper left-hand corner of the ioSender window. This allows you to do the obvious - connect to your grblHAL controller. But it also allows you to connect after rebooting or power cycling the board. And, it allows you to switch between Ethernet and USB. Also, the Ethernet connection dialog has a Scan option - it will scan for connected Ethernet-based boards and populate the IP address automatically. Basically, it works the way you think it should! Let's look at these in more depth.

When you start up ioSenderV2 with no grblHAL controller present, it will load and display a Sender connection dialog. If you dismiss it, ioSenderV2 will stay loaded, unlike earlier versions that exit if there is no controller present.

No port shown means it did not find a viable port. If you plug in a grblHAL controller and then click on the Connect menu item, you will see a dialog with a suggested USB port. Clicking on OK connects ioSenderV2 to the controller. Pretty much what you would expect.

If you have an Ethernet-based controller, prior to V2, you had to

• Boot up with USB

• Find/save the IP address

• Exit ioSender

• Prevent the controller from booting

• Start ioSender which would then present the Connection dialog

• Plug the IP address into the Connection dialog

• Restart the controller

• And finally. press the OK button.

Whew!

Now, all you have to do is plug in the grblHAL controller, start V2, select the Network tab in the Sender connection dialog, click on the Scan network button, wait a few seconds for the IP address to populate, and then click OK. No rebooting, no quitting ioSender and restarting, no squirreling away the IP address. No muss, no fuss. The upshot of this is to use Ethernet you don't have to connect via USB at all!

I have suppressed my Class C IP Address for paranoia reasons.

Note: the Scan network feature only works for a Class C IPv4 network. If you don't know what that means, don't worry. It will work with the vast majority of consumer routers.

Another way V2 makes Ethernet setup easy is in the Settings:App panel. The setting "Prefer network connection if available" causes V2, when connected via USB, to look for an IP address in the $I stream. If it finds one, V2 switches to a network connection.

If you want to avoid a network router and use a direct PC to grblHAL Ethernet connection, you still have to go through the process of setting up your PC and configuring your grblHAL board for a static connection. See this post for detailed instructions on Ethernet without routers.

Whenever you change network settings in grblHAL, you will need to power cycle the controller board to make the changes take effect.

You might ask, "What if I have multiple USB ports and connect to the wrong one?" It fails very gently.

You can choose to exit like the original ioSender or you can keep it open and try the correct USB port.

Hopefully you can see why I am excited by the V2 connection features.

Stay tuned for more V2 feature posts.

About Me.

I'm Phil Barrett, a long time CNC enthusiast. I run a small company, Brookwood Design, that makes several breakout boards for grblHAL and love to help people get the most out of their CNC machines.