[MFchief]

Hi All,

In case anyone has been waiting, the Path Pilot wireless adapters are back in stock at Tormach.

Terry

[popspipes]

Thanks Terry,
I am going to get one ordered.
thanks for the info

[wtopace]

I ordered this one (looked to be the same as Tormach's) and it has been working flawlessly for me, plug and play.

Edimax EW 7811UN N150 USB 2 0 Wireless Nano Adapter 4710700927168 | eBay

[CNC-Dude]

I ordered this one (looked to be the same as Tormach's) and it has been working flawlessly for me, plug and play.

Edimax EW 7811UN N150 USB 2 0 Wireless Nano Adapter 4710700927168 | eBay

I also bought this when I got into Raspberi Pi's so I decided to give it a try this morning and VOILA! It works like a charm.

BTW, I bought it on Amazon, but it is the same price as the eBay one.

[popspipes]

I ordered this one (looked to be the same as Tormach's) and it has been working flawlessly for me, plug and play.

Edimax EW 7811UN N150 USB 2 0 Wireless Nano Adapter 4710700927168 | eBay

I received mine today, I have tried to get it installed and no luck, it is the Tormach vrsion. I think a call to Tormach is in order for tomorrow.

[CNC-Dude]

Are you sure you followed the instructions to the micron? Any change in the text fields and it is not going to work. I had to go through the PDF at least 10 times before I got it to work. Every slash (\), every name, directory and password counts.

Installing this feature brought me back to the 1990's, DOS and Windows 3.11, heh heh heh.

[popspipes]

Are you sure you followed the instructions to the micron? Any change in the text fields and it is not going to work. I had to go through the PDF at least 10 times before I got it to work. Every slash (\), every name, directory and password counts.

Installing this feature brought me back to the 1990's, DOS and Windows 3.11, heh heh heh.

I agree with you there!
I connected the TV to the internet a year or so ago, and it was a nightmare too, after 3 or 4 days I finally got it to work.
I tried installing the software from the cd, that didnt work either, I am sure its a setting somewhere. Ubuntu/Linux isnt as user friendly as windows but it sure runs the the machine without worry of it doing something uncalled for!

[wtopace]

I agree with you there!
I connected the TV to the internet a year or so ago, and it was a nightmare too, after 3 or 4 days I finally got it to work.
I tried installing the software from the cd, that didnt work either, I am sure its a setting somewhere. Ubuntu/Linux isnt as user friendly as windows but it sure runs the the machine without worry of it doing something uncalled for!

If you can elaborate on any configuration you have done and the current situation you're in (error messages, troubleshooting you have done, etc...), I would be happy to try to help in any way I can. Unfortunately, I haven't seen Tormach's instructions yet, but I can poke around for them. If anyone has the link handy, that might help.

[Gilmax]

I ordered this one (looked to be the same as Tormach's) and it has been working flawlessly for me, plug and play.

Edimax EW 7811UN N150 USB 2 0 Wireless Nano Adapter 4710700927168 | eBay

Just to confirm. That's exactly what I received from Tormach but mine cost 5$ more...

[wtopace]

No worries, it sounds like you're doing great so far.

Since I normally CM control all of my g-code just like my real computer code I write, I went ahead and wrote a cron job on my mill to pull down any updates every minute. This process is working great for me, I just make my g-code edits (or post a g-code file from Sprutcam), commit changes to SVN and the mill automatically grabs the latest copy. Best of all for any non-software people out there, every commit creates a new version of each file you modified, so you retain all previous versions as well... this way when a mill slams into the vise, you can do a "diff" with the previous g-code to see what happened.

The setup isn't trivial and would require poking at the underlying Ubuntu, but if you guys would like to try it, I can put a detailed guide with screenshots together to post. It sure beats carrying a usb drive back and forth and in my opinion is far better than drag and drop.

[kstrauss]

The setup isn't trivial and would require poking at the underlying Ubuntu, but if you guys would like to try it, I can put a detailed guide with screenshots together to post. It sure beats carrying a usb drive back and forth and in my opinion is far better than drag and drop.

Yes, please! That would be greatly appreciated.

[bevinp]

Wtopace,
Another "Yes please ".
Thanks

[shred]

I post to the machine share... works great as long as the PP is powered up.

[shred]

I use a powered USB hub and it works well enough, but they can get 'hung up' by nearby electrical noise (eg: TIG welder HF start). Unpowered hubs are typically worse...

Tormach said they don't approve of hubs because of the issues they had with Windows and Mach but are hoping to change that with PP once they get some more experience. Especially since the controller doesn't have enough ports for everything if you load the system up with scanner, touchscreen, keyboard, mouse, jog shuttle, network, memory port and so on.

A short USB extension to get the wireless dongle outside the stand metal box would probably work ok as well. The long ones are a lot more iffy unless powered and then they are basically 1-port hubs anyway.

[popspipes]

I installed the wireless adapter on a usb cable so I could run it outside of the cabinet, the wireless adapter worked fine, the signal was almost 100%, The problem with it was the other usb port that I use for programs would not work?? I removed the wireless adapter and it started working again, I assume it was introducing noise on the other usb cable that was in close proximity to it and kept it from working normally.

I am thinking maybe a large cutout in the door, and install a lexan window in it may work?? Maybe increase the signal strength due to the plastic window and still keep the crud out??

[cordvision]

Does anybody have an Edimax EW-7811Un working (not an EW-7811UnR2)?

I followed the instructions to the letter and mine still isn't working. The adapter blinks about five times right after I plug it in, then stops for awhile before it starts blinking again. This repeats a couple times but that is it. Is the adapters little blue led light constantly on when it has a connection?

[quarky42]

Does anybody have an Edimax EW-7811Un working (not an EW-7811UnR2)?

I followed the instructions to the letter and mine still isn't working. The adapter blinks about five times right after I plug it in, then stops for awhile before it starts blinking again. This repeats a couple times but that is it. Is the adapters little blue led light constantly on when it has a connection?

Sorry for the late reply, but yes I have both models working. I have a good quality (thicker wire) USB extension cable running outside of the cabinet. After you plug it in, you have to use the ADMIN NETWORK command in the MDI interface to configure the wireless network that you are connecting to. I also used that interface to configure a static IP address for my mill so that I would always know what IP it was on when I try to bring up the network share.

\\<IP>\gcode
username is: workgroup\operator
password is: pcnc

I use a batch script to open up / browse the share, so these two lines are in a .bat script file:
net use \\<IP>\gcode /user:workgroup\operator pcnc
start \\<IP>\gcode

<IP> needs to be replaced with the actual IP address of the controller.

The blue light blinks and stops when you are not connected to a wifi network. The blue light continually blinks when you are connected. I believe you need to go through the ADMIN NETWORK command.

I did find that one of my USB extension cords did not work for the USB adapter. It was low quality and probably higher resistance (lower gauge wire inside it) so buy a good quality USB extension cable... 5 to 6 feet ought to be plenty.

[quarky42]

Does anybody have an Edimax EW-7811Un working (not an EW-7811UnR2)?

I followed the instructions to the letter and mine still isn't working. The adapter blinks about five times right after I plug it in, then stops for awhile before it starts blinking again. This repeats a couple times but that is it. Is the adapters little blue led light constantly on when it has a connection?

I did confirm with another person, also. They had to use a higher quality (thicker) USB Extension cable to get better reception. I ran my extension cable out of the cabinet, up and into the swing arm for the monitor. It sticks out there and gets a good signal from my garage to my router (middle of the house through a couple walls.)

[scott216]

I've got my wireless adapter on a 6 foot extension cable and my connection is very intermittent. On my windows 7 laptop, sometimes the connection visible and just fine, a few minutes later it might not be. If I wait a minute, it usually appears again. Very flaky. My laptop is pretty close to the wireless adapter, about 6 feet away. I'm gonna try putting the adapter directly in the PC to see if that helps. I'll also try just a good quality 3 ft extension cable.

Would it be possible to get rid of the adapter and just run an Ethernet cable between the PathPilot PC and my laptop? If so, how would I configure this to work?

[kstrauss]

Unless I misunderstand your description your laptop doesn't connect to PP but rather connects to your WiFi router which in turn connects to PP. Thus, the important distance is from laptop to router rather than laptop to PP.

I bit the bullet and buried an Ethernet cable between the router in my basement and my detached workshop. The PP machine and an old XP box are hardwired to a hub in the workshop. I now get file transfers and remote console sessions from my design machine in the basement at gigabit speeds (!) and the PP machine connects to everything in the house at 100Mbit. A wired link works great!