Raspberry PI with CNCjs to control a CNC
The goal of this project is to prepare a raspberry pi 3b to be able to connect a CNC and control it using the Web UI with my iPhone / Laptop.
And optionally, you can also connect the raspberry pi camera to the setup.
Materials
- Raspberry PI
- SD Card
- (Optional) Camera
- Raspberry PI OS Lite up-to-date
Software
- NodeJS > 10
- NPM
- SSH
- cncjs
Steps
OS installation and basic configuration
The installation is not covered here, please follow the official documentation
sudo raspi-config
I've enabled the camera and configured the WiFi
Also you might want to update the pi user password.
Install NodeJS and npm
For this I'll use the NodeJS version available in the apt repo.
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y nodejs npm
Install CNCjs globally
npm i -g cncjs --unsafe-perm
Create a service to start cncjs at boot
This service will start the small web server at boot time.
sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/cncjs.service
Add the following:
[Unit]
Description=CNCJS Service
After=network.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=pi
ExecStart=/bin/bash /home/pi/scripts/cnc.sh
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Create this script : /home/pi/scripts/cnc.sh
Add the following
#!/bin/bash
cncjs --allow-remote-access
To enable the service:
sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/cncjs.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable cncjs.service
You can either sudo reboot or sudo systemctl start cncjs to test the service.
To retrieve the logs or the service status, sudo systemctl status cncjs
Access
You can access the WebUI using the http://<ip>:8000 from any devices.
(Optional) Raspberry PI Camera
I've followed the steps from cncjs documentation,
Install prerequisites
sudo apt-get install -y cmake libjpeg8-dev gcc g++ libv4l-0
Download mjpg streamer
wget https://github.com/jacksonliam/mjpg-streamer/archive/refs/tags/v1.0.0.tar.gz
tar xvzf v1.0.0.tar.gz
cd mjpg-streamer-1.0.0/mjpg-streamer-experimental
make
sudo make install
Include the command to our start at boot script
update the following script : /home/pi/scripts/cnc.sh
Add the following
#!/bin/bash
pushd /home/pi/mjpg-streamer-1.0.0/mjpg-streamer-experimental
./mjpg_streamer -o "output_http.so -w ./www" -i "input_raspicam.so" &
popd
cncjs --allow-remote-access
Extra
- cncjs recommends to create a user, you can do that using the webui.
- I've tested the setup with a ShapeOko 2, it works great !
- The connection uses the baud rate 9600 and the
$$command is well supported (it uses GRBL).
- The connection uses the baud rate 9600 and the
First time using new device
When trying to connect with cncjs to the webcam you must enter the feed URL
You can access this page to retrive the URL : http://<ip>:8080/videolan.html
Voila !