Capturing job code directly to local memory / SD

[TimHall82]

Hello all, can anyone suggest a way to send jobs from the usual G-Code senders and capture this to the SD card that is mounted directly to the controller board (Teensy 4.1) so the job can then be run from this capture as a stand-alone controller?

The use case I envisage would be a single USB connection to the GRBL firmware that sends files in their entirety (no streaming). The cycle start command is then used to initialise the sent job.

This then negates the need for physical file transfer with SD-Card from control PC to firmware, which is unreasonable for most of our potential users.

Would love to hear any thought on this, or a point in the right direction.

Thanks

[terjeio]

A plugin that monitors for a special G-code comment containing the file name can claim the input stream and redirect it to the file until a M2, M30 or a file end (second % character) is received. This event is generated on G-code comments...

[TimHall82]

Thank you for the information. I am not a programmer, therefore this may take some time for me to understand.

The plugin you refer to, is this a potential plugin (that would require development) or something pre-existing?

Thank you.

[terjeio]

It is a potential one, there are pre-existing ones that partly cover the stuff that has to be done.
You may run into issues with some senders though, they may strip comments from the gcode sent to the controller...

If the controller supports networking you may consider FTP for transferring data, there are several standalone available applications for that. And the YModem file transfer protocol may also be an used, it is already supported by the controller (as an option). The YModem implementation is only partial though, it requires the controller to initiate the transfer according to spec.
ioSender supports both FTP and YModem, with YModem the sender just starts transmitting data. There might be python code floating around for YModem - I believe this could easily be changed to not wait for the controller to initiate a transfer. There may also be code in other languages available as well.

Marlin (3D printer firmware) supports file transfers via M-codes, these could be implemented in a plugin as well. However I do not believe any CNC specific senders supports those. And from what I have read this way of transferring files is slow and error prone. And it might be problematic to parse out string arguments for the M-commands since grblHAL is designed for numeric arguments only.