Endstop configuration

SupraGuy · February 17, 2022, 6:03am

That’s normal for NC switches, and one of the reasons that we use them. If the cable comes unplugged, the machine stops when homing instead of crashing into the end.

Typically the switches are set up with a resistor between the +5V rail and the signal pin. This raises the voltage at the signal pin to logic HIGH, which is the flag for triggered. We use a NC switch to short the signal to ground which brings it to logic LOW. This way if the circuit is opened either by the switch getting triggered, or the wire coming unplugged, the machine will stop in its homing sequence.

EDIT: if you send a ? to GRBL it will report the machine state, including triggered pins. (If your version of GRBL is new enough, apparently.)

Juge · February 17, 2022, 6:14am

I have plugged then with NO.

ttraband · February 17, 2022, 3:19pm

Try issuing a ? command from the terminal with one of the end stops triggered/jumpered. You should see evidence in the status report. If not, check grbl documentation for your specific version to set the $10 mask.

Also, double-check your $5 setting as it might be inverting the end stop state behavior.

(sorry for all the edits) Finally, I had to add capacitors to my end stop connections at the CNC Shield end to filter out noise on the switch lines that was causing false-positives. My switches are also NO.

Juge · February 17, 2022, 4:29pm

Thanks, I am not sure about the $5 the manual talks about hi and low. Should I then use $5=1 for NO switch?

I guess I could also consider putting a capacitor, did you just connect it between the pins? What kind of capacitance should it have?

jeffeb3 · February 17, 2022, 4:34pm

github.com

gnea/grbl/blob/master/doc/markdown/settings.md

## Getting Started

First, connect to Grbl using the serial terminal of your choice.

Set the baud rate  to **115200** as 8-N-1 (8-bits, no parity, and 1-stop bit.)

Once connected
 you should get the Grbl-prompt, which looks like this:

```
Grbl 1.1d ['$' for help]
```

Type $ and press enter to have Grbl print a help message. You should not see any local echo of the $ and enter. Grbl should respond with:

```
[HLP:$$ $# $G $I $N $x=val $Nx=line $J=line $SLP $C $X $H ~ ! ? ctrl-x]
```

The ‘$’-commands are Grbl system commands used to tweak the settings, view or change Grbl's states and running modes, and start a homing cycle. The last four **non**-'$' commands are realtime control commands that can be sent at anytime, no matter what Grbl is doing. These either immediately change Grbl's running behavior or immediately print a report of the important realtime data like current position (aka DRO).

This file has been truncated. show original

Looks like they all invert together with $5.

Juge · February 18, 2022, 7:46am

From what I found I think one should use $5=1 for NC and $5=0 for NO configuration. I could not
get my x- to cooperate at all when I connected it with NC. I switched to other arduino, other shield everything, it just would not do anything.

With NO (but I think the interference would be similar problem with NC) I seem to get some disturbances and therefore the hard limit kicks in randomly. I ordered some capacitors and I will try them, parallel between the pins.

ttraband · February 18, 2022, 3:26pm

On the CNC Shield v3.00 that I’ve got, the board connections are parallel, so if you wanted 2 NC switches on one axis, you needed to put them in series, otherwise opening one didn’t register since the other was still making the circuit.

Paciente8159 · February 18, 2022, 10:58pm

If you are getting interference in your switches there are a couple of tricks you can do…

Check if there are not any loose wires.

As an interface circuit for the limit switch I use some opto couplers. (don’t judge my wiring work )

This does 2 things. isolates the arduino and PC from the cnc machine and allows me to run the limit switches at a higher voltage (for example 12V.) making it less suceptible to EMI noise.

I also prefer using the NC in series with the Arduino’s internal pull up. It’s just safer since any forgotten or bad connection is detected.

Then there is the problem of false positive when the tool is working. I have a 1.5kw spindle and vfd and I simply shielded it with thinfoil and ductape. On the side of the vfd I connected the thinfoil with a copper wire to ground and that made wonders. 0 issues after that.

Juge · February 19, 2022, 1:05pm

Does a capacitor work at all on a circuit with NO switch? I seem to be getting an interference and that’s why the stop is triggered but how does a capacitor add any filtering to a false-positive? I think this is the simpler solution, so I will try this one first.

At the second option I guess octocoupler or a relay would indeed allow to drive the switch circuit with higher voltage, I have 24V going for my CNC shield so I guess I would need something in that control circuit, for instance a led?

jeffeb3 · February 19, 2022, 1:32pm

The capacitor will take a fraction of a second to charge up. So if there is a tiny blip, it will sink into the capacitor and the signal pin won’t see a voltage change. If the actual switch triggers it, the current flow will be strong and charge the capacitor quickly, and the voltage will reflect that.

The cap needs to be wired between signal and ground.

SupraGuy · February 19, 2022, 2:02pm

I had a board that liked to give false positives on the touchplate (NO), but I was using NC endstops.

The circuit goes as follows: The signal pin registers a “stop” when it is logic HIGH. In order to do this, there is a resistor between the 5V rail and the signal pin. When there is no path to ground, this raises the voltage to 5V (Or near enough) and the pin registers high, and triggers. When there is an NC switch, it shorts the signal to ground, registering logic LOW, which is untriggered.

If you have NO switches, you reverse the logic gates. The signal registers triggered at logic LOW when the switch closes. (Logic LOW triggering is more normal in electronics, actually.) I don’t like using capacitors to filter this because it also slows down the signal, and if you’re close enough to have noise, then you’re slowing down the signal by a random time interval. Not my idea of a good way to get precision. (Yeah, probably unimportant in the slower second pass, but…)

So there’s another way to filter out the false positives, and that is to wire an additional resistor between the 5V rail and the signal pin. This decreases the overall resistance, which means that there needs to be a much higher noise signal to drop the logic to LOW. The downside is a little more power usage at idle, because it will pass a bit more current to the pin, and a little bit more when the stop is triggered and it passes the current to ground.

Most of the pullup resistors that I’ve seen look to be about 470R. That’s about 10-11mA at 5V. The UNO datasheet says that you can have about 200mA on a pin. I added a 470R resistor on one of my boards between the 5V rail and the signal pin, which essentially halves the resistance, and increases the current to 20~22mA. For me, this was good to remove any false triggering for a NO switch, and did not introduce any appreciable latency to the switch timing.

Physically, what I did was put a 3 pin connector on the endstop switch, with one leg of the resistor on the end pin, and the other added to the signal pin in the middle, with the wires connected as you’d otherwise expect between signal and ground.

Juge · February 19, 2022, 3:28pm

I thought that it is enough to connect it parallel on the connector on CNC Shield. I saw somewhere a photo where somebody had just stuffed a capacitor into the dupont-connector. I also saw pictures where someone had soldered it directly to the microswitch, but I think a better solution is to go for the board side…

Paciente8159 · February 19, 2022, 3:33pm

I use simple PC817 optocouplers. In your case just adding a simple resistor to limit the current in the input diode of the optocoupler is sufficient. If you want some sort of visual confirmation then yes you would add an additional resistor and diode in parallel with that circuit. If you want visual confirmation on the opposite side then you need to add a power source on the side of the Arduino input circuit.

Juge · February 19, 2022, 3:36pm

Just found this when googleing, seems to be what you said…

jeffeb3 · February 19, 2022, 3:53pm

Is the black row of pins not ground? I was expecting it to be connected in parallel too. I am not as familiar with the grbl boards.

Juge · February 19, 2022, 7:10pm

Well in the end one needs to be on “+” and the other on “-” side, otherwise there is no current going through, so unless there is something between - let’s say black and that gnd-pin I would assume that it does not matter if I put the capacitor like in the picture, or simply between black and white row pins. I am not a hardcore electronics crack just a guy who puts the stuff together and checks the circuit after the smoke clears out…

Maybe I am wrong, but I would also expect that NC type connection might be less sensitive to interference. If I am on 0V and get a little induced current, it might trigger the alarm but if I have the 5V on the NC switch I think some minor fluctuations do not matter, so it might not trigger the alarm. I think
in the end there is only one way to find out…

Paciente8159 · February 21, 2022, 10:38am

I think @jeffeb3 was saying this:

According to this picture the black strip being connected to to GND is configurable although I’m not seeing were is the selection jumper. It seems it can be configured to be common VCC instead of GND

EDIT: After a bit more looking the common selection was on older versions of this shield. Never the less you should check if your board has that option or not.

jeffeb3 · February 21, 2022, 1:26pm

Even if it is Vcc, the capacitor would work there either way.

Either the black pins are ground, the signal pin has an internal pull-up, and the logic triggers on a low signal.

Or the black pins are Vcc, the signal pin has an internal pull down, and the logic triggers on a high signal.

Either way, that capacitor is in the right place to filter out noise.

Paciente8159 · February 21, 2022, 9:53pm

Yup.
To make it easier you can use a non pol cap. The effect Will be the same. Also with a smaller cap the charging time will be smaller. Discharge should not be an issue since these internal resistors are in the Kohm range.

ttraband · February 22, 2022, 3:09pm

Sorry - I’ve been away for a couple of days. I may be the one that “stuck the capacitors in the connectors” that folks are referring to. I used non-polarized capacitors and slipped them into the connector between the signal and ground pins and they’ve been working fine. My control board is not mounted to the Burly base at all, so vibration has not been an issue so far. If they start to work loose, I might either re-crimp the connector ends to capture the capacitor, or I might just solder them to the underside of the board.

All those black pins along the edge are indeed a common ground.