Tag: hal

Temperature PID control - Part Deux

Update: this version of the component may compile on 10.04LTS without errors/warnings: frequency2temperature.comp (thanks to jepler!)

There's been some interest in my 2-wire temperature PID control from 2010. It uses one parallel port pin for a PWM-heater, and another connected to a 555-timer for temperature measurement. I didn't document the circuits very well, but they should be simple to reproduce for someone with an electronics background.

Here's the HAL setup once again:

The idea is to count the 555 output-frequency with an encoder, compare this to a set-point value from the user, and use a pid component to drive a pwm-generator that drives the heater.

Now it might be nicer to set the temperature in degrees C instead of a frequency. I've hacked together a new component called frequency2temperature that can be inserted after the encoder. This obviously required the thermistor B-parameters as well as the 555-astable circuit component values as input (these are hard-coded constants in frequency2temperature.comp) . Like this:

I didn't have the actual circuits and extruder at hand when coding this. So instead I made a simulated extruder (sim_extruder) component and generated simulated 555-output. Like this:

This also requires a conversion in the reverse direction called temperature2frequency. A stepgen is then used to generate a pulse-train (simulating the 555-output).

  • The INI and HAL files for the simulated extruder, based on the default axis_mm config: simextruder
  • frequency2temperature component:  frequency2temperature.comp (install with: "comp --install frequency2temperature.comp")
  • temperature2frequency component: temperature2frequency.comp (only for simulated setup, not required if you have actual hardware)
  • sim_extruder component: sim_extruder.comp (only for simulated setup, not required if you have actual hardware)

"heartyGFX" has made some progress on this. He has a proper circuit diagram for the PWM-heater and 555-astable. His circuits look much nicer than mine!

The diagrams above were drawn with Inkscape in SVG format: temp_pid_control_svg_diagrams

toggle2nist

EMC uses 'nist-logic' for most IO, meaning there is one on-switch/signal to switch a thing on, one off-switch/signal to switch it off, and one indicator-signal to tell you the state.

To connect momentary-on pushbuttons to EMC you need at least the toggle component, but I've found that it doesn't work that great with things that can be set/reset by other parts of EMC. For example the coolant state might be set from the AXIS checkbox, G-code, MDI, a pyVCP button, or a hardware button through halui.

I made toggle2nist to set the coolant state with a momentary-on pushbutton. The hardware button connects to a toggle, and the toggle output connects to toggle2nist. It also needs the is-on signal, and produces as outputs the on/off signals (to halui.flood.on and halui.flood.off in this case).

component toggle2nist "toggle button to nist logic";

pin in  bit in;

pin in  bit is_on;

pin out bit on;

pin out bit off;

variable int old_in;

variable int to_state=0;

function _;

license "GPL";

;;

FUNCTION(_)  {

if (in!=old_in) /* a toggle has occurred */ {

    if (is_on) {   /* turn OFF if it's on */

        on=0;

        off=1;

        to_state=0;

    }

    else if (!is_on) { /* turn ON if it's off */

        on=1;

        off=0;

        to_state=1;

    }

}

else {

/* reset pins when we see the desired state */

    if (to_state==is_on) {

        on=0;

        off=0;

    }

}

old_in=in;

}