grbl_ros

A simple ROS2 package for interfacing with a grbl device.

Currently supports:

• polling status of grbl device
• sending plain GCODE commands using ROS2 service

Supported Platforms

All Tier 1 platforms = Windows 10, Mac OS X, and either Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 20.04 OS | ROS 2 Version | ———— | ————- | All Tier 1 platforms | Dashing Diademata | All Tier 1 platforms | Eloquent Elusor | All Tier 1 platforms | Foxy Fitzroy | All Tier 1 platforms | Rolling Ridley |

Dashing and Eloquent target Ubuntu 18.04 while Foxy and Rolling target Ubuntu 20.04.

How to use

The grbl_ros package exposes two major functionalities to ROS: pose tracking of the GRBL device and sending commands to the GRBL device.

This package publishes a transform (aka tf) to the most recent machine coordinates received from the GRBL device. This allows for other ROS nodes to “know” where the machine is which can help enable many different functions.

Secondly this package runs two ROS2 actions: send_gcode_cmd and send_gcode_file. Both actions do what they say they do and enable the user to monitor the status of these actions as they happen.

Getting started

Quick start:

# for Ubuntu
sudo apt install ros-<your-distro>-grbl-ros

Fork and clone the repository if you’d like to compile it yourself. Once cloned, you can now build your workspace by running the following from your workspace’s root directory:

colcon build

Once built, just make sure you’ve sourced your overlay (source /path/to/workspace/install/setup.bash) and you should be able to start up the grbl_ros node:

ros2 run grbl_ros grbl_node --ros-args --params-file /path/to/workspace/src/grbl_ros/config/cnc001.yaml

Before you can command your GRBL device to move, most likely you’ll need to unlock it using the $X command:

ros2 action send_goal /cnc_001/send_gcode_cmd grbl_msgs/action/SendGcodeCmd '{command: $X}'

You should see Goal finished with status: SUCCEEDED and a print-out in the grbl_ros terminal that the GRBL device is now unlocked.

From here, you can send your device whatever GCODE commands you would like. Here are a few common ones to get you started:

ros2 action send_goal /cnc_001/send_gcode_cmd grbl_msgs/action/SendGcodeCmd '{command: X1.0}'
# TBD, recommend more if you'd like more to be listed here!

Testing

Unit tests are run on every PR and every release across every supported platform for each ROS2 release. Refer to the “actions” tab for this repository to see these tests yourself.

Contributing

Are you using grbl_ros? Do you like what functionality it provides but want it to do something more? PLEASE reach out!!! I want to hear from you! Make an issue, PR or smoke signal to get my attention as I would love to hear from you!

Changelog for package grbl_ros

0.0.16 (2021-11-27)

• fix changelog tags that were missing dates
• bump version in prep for release
• Merge pull request #111 from flynneva/fix/default-params-and-grbl-obj-err Fix/default params and grbl obj err
• fix flake8 errors
• [110] add warning about missing fields in status
• set defaults for parameters, fix grbl_obj error
• add more info to quickstart README
• fixed typo
• bump ros action
• still trying to fix docs
• docs source ros
• ls ros in docs build
• remove HOME env var
• add a bunch of prints
• docs still not sourcing ros
• ugly source filepath
• source ros from opt
• full path source
• fix fpath for docs
• one more try for the docs
• dont include connext
• cd to source code before building docs
• test including connext
• forgot quotes
• test for optional connext ci
• forgot one cd
• change gh action directories
• debugging sourcing ros
• ls opt ros path to debug
• sh not bash
• try another way to source ros
• update README
• source ros with make docs cmd
• source ros before building docs
• update os for docs action
• add ros setup action to docs action
• fixed flake8 errors
• more doc updates
• more updates to docs
• update doc structure, add gitignore
• removed pytest from requirements.txt
• remove ros pkgs from requirements
• one more time
• filepath to requirements
• trying to fix filepath
• add filepath for requirements
• move dependencies install after ros env setup
• fixed yml typo
• add requirements.txt file
• switched back to ammaraskar sphinx action
• trying to update docs action
• hopefully final pep257 fix
• more pep257 fixes
• fixed pep257 errors
• Merge pull request #75 from flynneva/improve_docs fix flake8 errors
• fix flake8 errors
• Merge pull request #73 from flynneva/improve_docs Improve docs
• slowly improve docs
• remove blank line in package.xml
• bumped docs version
• forgot to bump setup.py
• Contributors: Evan Flynn, flynneva

0.0.15 (2020-10-22)

• updated changelog spacing
• update changelog
• add extra line
• removed whitespace
• removed env var in test completely
• switched test from env var to try except
• fix pep257 error
• added geometry msgs to autodoc
• docs work, still need clean up
• trying to make docs work
• update readme & docs
• remove mkdir docs
• fixed copyright and flake8 errors
• Merge branch 'devel' of github.com:flynneva/grbl_ros into devel
• add back in docs folder
• add mkdir docs
• prepare release
• Contributors: Evan Flynn, flynneva

0.0.14 (2020-10-21)

• update changelog
• update status badges
• update changelog

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