The ESP's homed flag survives bbctrl restarts (since the ESP itself
stays powered). Host state, on the other hand, gets reset to zero on
boot - State.reset zeros ap and offset_a. Trusting the ESP's homed
flag in that situation made gplan think A was homed at machine-coord 0
while physically the axis was at 134, which then rejected any move
to the bottom (G1 A-134) as 'less than minimum soft limit 0'.
Send UNHOME (new auxcnc verb that just clears g_homed without
moving) on every host connect. The user has to re-home explicitly,
which goes through the proper Mach.home path that sets up the
offset and gplan position consistently.
Falls back to HOMED? if the firmware doesn't know UNHOME, so older
auxcnc builds keep their previous behaviour.
State.reset extended to also clear motor 4's homed flags
(<motor>homed and <motor>h) so the synthetic external-axis motor
gets reset alongside the real AVR motors.
Big-bang refactor of the W-axis integration. The auxcnc ESP stepper
is now exposed to the bbctrl planner (camotics gplan) as a virtual
A axis with no AVR motor mapping. gplan parses gcode for A natively,
applies soft limits, units, accel ramping and S-curve trajectories.
Line blocks with A motion are intercepted in Planner.__encode and
forked to the ESP via ExternalAxis on a worker thread; the residual
XYZ motion goes to the AVR as before.
This replaces the previous (MSG,HOOK:aux:N) side-channel: gcode
authors now write G1 A50 F1000 (or G28 A0 to home) and the planner
handles it the same way it handles X/Y/Z.
## Architecture
The AVR has 4 motor channels (0-3, all assigned to X/Y/Y/Z on
Onefinity). Looking at the AVR source, an axis with no motor
mapping is fully accepted: line blocks with that axis target update
ex.position[axis] in exec.c, but no motor steps because
motor_get_axis(motor)==axis returns -1. The AVR reports 'p' for
all 6 axes regardless. So we expose A to State as a synthetic
motor (index 4, host-only), populated from aux.json with full
kinematic config (vm/am/jm/tn/tm). State.find_motor and the
snapshot projection now walk 0..4. gplan sees A as a real axis.
## New module: ExternalAxis
- Registers synthetic motor 4 with vm/am/jm/tn/tm so
State.find_motor('a') returns 4 and gplan picks up
soft limits + kinematics.
- Worker thread drains a target queue so ESP RPCs (which can
take seconds) never block the bbctrl ioloop.
- execute_to_mm: synchronous, used by HTTP endpoints.
- enqueue_target_mm: non-blocking, used by Planner.__encode.
- home(): runs ESP cycle, syncs <axis>p and <axis>_homed.
- abort(): drains queue.
## Planner
- __encode splits external-axis target out of line blocks.
- Pure A move -> emits id-sync only (planner advances cleanly).
- Mixed XYZ + A -> AVR runs XYZ trapezoid concurrent with the
ESP move (v1 accepts the slight desync; users wanting strict
sequencing put A on its own gcode line).
- _<axis>_homed for the synthetic motor mirrors into State only.
- Planner.reset drains the worker queue and forces resync.
## Mach
- Mach.home(axis='a') routes through ext.home() instead of the
standard G28.2/G38.6 latch sequence (which doesn't apply to an
ESP-driven axis), then issues G28.3 a<home> to sync gplan.
- Mach.unhome strips the AVR path for A.
- Mach.stop / E-stop drain the external-axis worker queue.
- Mach.jog strips A so the AVR doesn't see it (continuous-rate
jogging not supported on ESP yet; use /api/aux/jog instead).
## State
- find_motor walks 0..4 (synthetic motor 4 lives in vars).
- snapshot projection includes motor 4 so 4tn -> a_tn etc.
- get_axis_vector picks up motor-4 values without changes.
## AuxAxis
- Adds set_state_observer hook so ExternalAxis sees homed-flag
changes after homing/boot-banner.
- DEFAULTS now include axis_letter, max_velocity_m_per_min,
max_accel_km_per_min2, max_jerk_km_per_min3 in user-facing
motor-config units (m/min, km/min^2, km/min^3) matching the
onefinity per-motor convention.
## AuxPreprocessor
- Drops W-token rewriting entirely. M100..M103 ATC mapping kept.
- W tokens in legacy gcode now warn (once per file) instead of
being rewritten. Migration: replace W with A.
## Hooks
- aux/aux_rel/aux_setzero hooks retired. aux_home kept as a
legacy alias routing to ext.home() for older preprocessed
gcode. ATC hooks (droptool/grabtool/release/clamp) unchanged.
- E-stop now drains the external-axis worker queue.
## Web.py
- /api/aux/{home,jog,move} now route through ExternalAxis when
available so DRO and gplan position stay in sync.
## UI (axis-vars.js + control-view.pug)
- _get_motor_id and _check_is_enabled fall back to motor index 4
so the standard A column in the DRO renders state for the
ESP-driven axis (with full offset / set-position / per-axis
home support).
- Legacy W row is gated on !a.enabled - shown only for installs
that haven't migrated.
- WAxisSettings.svelte exposes the new max_velocity_m_per_min /
max_accel_km_per_min2 / max_jerk_km_per_min3 fields and an
axis_letter selector for picking A/B/C.
## Open follow-ups (validate on hardware)
- Q1: gplan soft-limit enforcement for A with min/max set.
Easy smoke test: max_w=50, MDI G1 A100, expect rejection.
- Q2: AVR behaviour with a target dict containing A values for
a motorless axis. Read of exec.c suggests it's safe; needs a
smoke test (no motor faults, no unexpected step counts).
- Q3: pause/resume mid-A-move semantics. ESP doesn't honour
bbctrl pauses; ext.abort drains the queue but a move-in-flight
runs to completion. Acceptable for v1; v2 could add a synced
pause.
Adds atc_droptool/atc_grabtool/atc_release/atc_clamp wrappers in
AuxAxis (each just an RPC waiting on the matching terminal reply
line from the firmware), and registers them as internal hook
handlers in Ctrl. Macros and gcode programs can now invoke the
tool changer with:
(MSG,HOOK:droptool:)
(MSG,HOOK:grabtool:)
(MSG,HOOK:release:)
(MSG,HOOK🗜️)
block_unpause + auto_resume mirrors the W-axis hooks: the program
pauses while the ESP runs the pneumatic sequence and resumes when
done. Soft timeouts match the worst-case ESP sequence durations.
Old defaults (4000 fast / 400 slow / 200 backoff / 16000 accel /
200 start) were never aggressive in practice because the user-
saved config drifted to even lower values (600/80/110). Re-tune
the DEFAULTS dict to values that are sensible at 25 steps/mm:
home_fast_sps 2500 ~100 mm/s seek
home_slow_sps 250 ~10 mm/s re-engage
home_backoff_steps 400 ~16 mm clear hysteresis
step_max_sps 4000 ~160 mm/s normal-move cap
step_accel_sps2 12000
These only affect machines without an existing aux.json. The Pi
at 10.1.10.55 was patched manually.
home() previously matched the wrong [home] line (firmware-side bug,
fixed in auxcnc) and even when it would have matched, it tried to
shift the step counter by writing 'WPOS <n>' after homing. The ESP's
WPOS handler clears HOMED, so a bbctrl restart would forget the home
state.
Push the desired step counter via HOMECFG zero= (firmware writes it
into the counter at the end of a successful HOME, leaving HOMED set).
home() now only reads the terminal [home] line; no post-home counter
fixup.
Rather than rebuild gplan + the AVR firmware to add a true 7th axis,
we treat W as a synchronous out-of-band axis that moves between G-code
blocks. The pipeline:
upload -> AuxPreprocessor rewrites W tokens into (MSG,HOOK:aux:N)
comments -> planner sees only XYZ + messages -> Hooks fires the
registered internal handler -> AuxAxis sends STEPS/HOME over serial
to the ESP and blocks the planner until done.
New files:
src/py/bbctrl/AuxAxis.py serial worker + RPC layer
src/py/bbctrl/AuxPreprocessor.py G-code rewriter
docs/AUX_W_AXIS.md design + ops notes
Changed:
Hooks.py register_internal(); fix the (MSG,HOOK:...) listener
to read the 'messages' state list (was broken before)
Ctrl.py instantiate AuxAxis, register aux/aux_rel/aux_home/
aux_setzero hooks
FileHandler.py rewrite uploads in place when they use W
Mach.py rewrite W tokens in MDI input the same way
Web.py REST endpoints under /api/aux/*
The ESP firmware in ../auxcnc was extended in lockstep: HOME, HOMECFG
(NVS-persisted), WPOS, HOMED?, LIMIT?, abortable STEPS with
limit-aware abort, trapezoidal ramps, deterministic [topic] reply
tokens, [boot] banner.
Real-time decisions (limit switch, step pulses) live on the ESP. The
host owns mm units, soft limits, and aux_homed bookkeeping. ESP
reboot mid-job clears aux_homed and surfaces a message; per design
manual jogs are still allowed without homing.
