Interesting Kickstarter project.

[Jonathan]

I think the price they're offering it at is pretty terrible - he should be able to get that board made and populated in China for £5-£10. That plus copying a bit of software on to an SD card ... doesn't seem right to profit so much from open source software.

Also, the board doesn't need the opto-couplers for the stepper drivers almost everyone uses, as they're already isolated. Remove those and the cost is now well below a fiver.

[Leadhead]

John - Your Aliexpress "box" looks very neat. Could you elaborate on it a little please. i.e. some pics of your setup and a word or two about setting it up for my non electronic brain would be well recieved if you have a moment.

[m_c]

I think the price they're offering it at is pretty terrible - he should be able to get that board made and populated in China for £5-£10. That plus copying a bit of software on to an SD card ... doesn't seem right to profit so much from open source software.

Also, the board doesn't need the opto-couplers for the stepper drivers almost everyone uses, as they're already isolated. Remove those and the cost is now well below a fiver.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought it was a bit overpriced for what it is, however some people are happy to pay for an almost ready to run package.

If you read the full description, the step/dir outputs don't have optos.

[nirmal]

I agree with you that it probably could be better specified, but I think his USP is that it comes with his custom made user interface which promises to make set up a breeze and is essentially ready to plug and play right out of the box. While this is no big deal for people with cnc experience or a technical background, it is quite attractive for non technical newbies like me as it makes linuxcnc a realistic option to try out for a relatively low cost which wouldn't be the case otherwise.

I think it is priced to recover development costs upfront, as there will be cheap clones appearing on all the popular far eastern auction sites within a few months if it is released commercially. I can't really fault him for that if it is his business plan.

I have one of the better specified aliexpress motion control boxes on order. It cost £114. If I get hit for taxes and duty, it will cost about the same as this so apart from needing a keyboard, monitor and mouse (which I already have lying spare) the costs are roughly in the same ballpark. It may or maynot perform better than this or the traditional parallel port PC/ Mach 3 solution but it is nice to have a choice that is usable for someone with rudimentary knowledge.

[magicniner]

it is quite attractive for non technical newbies like me as it makes linuxcnc a realistic option to try out for a relatively low cost which wouldn't be the case otherwise.

You can download a bootable CD image with Linuxcnc and you can buy a very good second hand desktop PC for £50.
I'm a massive fan of component systems where all your eggs ( Pounds Stirling ) are not in one basket ;-)

- Nick

[Lee Roberts]

You can download a bootable CD image with Linuxcnc and you can buy a very good second hand desktop PC for £50.
I'm a massive fan of component systems where all your eggs ( Pounds Stirling ) are not in one basket ;-)

- Nick

And if you want to, you can boot from a USB stick as your hard drive giving you more towards an SSD hard drive with out the expense.

I watched this last night, if your a geek (I like to pretend I'm one) you'll enjoy it, it's the first quarter mostly as he's talking about LinuxCNC and the typical XYZ cutting machines we build, BUT he also covers other stuff that I think would be good for a few here to listen to, Linux not really being real time and so on.

Something else I want to say to people out there is, don't let the "Linux" in LinuxCNC put you off because it's not all about terminals, servers, typing commands and all the other things you would associate with "Linux"...

...what you on about yes it is, yea but only if you want to get into that side of it, once your booted up, your looking at a GUI in the same way you would be looking at Mach...if you wanted to you could also boot with a/the GUI for Linux, once booted up (like a windows machine) your looking at a traditional desktop your used to seeing, OK it's not cosmetically identical but it's the samething, so off you go using it like any other PC (Windows/Apple).

Final thoughts...
Watch the video, drop your thoughts on the associations, then go have a look at what exactly it is you'll be using with LinuxCNC because it's not geek (unless you want that).

https://youtu.be/LdJ8xjCJIGo

.Me

[Neale]

I was also a bit surprised that someone is making a fuss about having a setup utility. My copy of LinuxCNC has one anyway, and it's really not that difficult to follow. I think that there is a reasonable argument that if you don't understand enough to fill in the gaps, then you probably don't understand the machine too well. But, folks have different ideas. I come from a very technical background; it's clear from some of the questions posted in this forum that many people don't.