stepper-ninja

An open-source, free, high-performance step generator, quadrature encoder counter, digital I/O, and PWM interface for LinuxCNC.

You definitely do not need the official breakout board to use stepper-ninja. A cheap printer-port breakout board is enough, and other configurations are also possible.

Documentation

• Installation Guide
• Make Your Own Breakout Board

Features

• Supported configurations:

  • W5100S-evb-pico UDP Ethernet. https://docs.wiznet.io/Product/iEthernet/W5100S/w5100s-evb-pico
  • W5500-evb-pico (same as above)
  • W5100S-evb-pico2 (same as above)
  • W5500-evb-pico2 (same as above)
  • pico + W5500 module (needs the same wiring as the W5100S-evb-pico)
  • pico2 + W5500 module (if you use a pico2 board with 48 GPIO, you can use the extra GPIO now)
  • pico + Raspberry Pi4 (uses direct SPI connection, tested with the official LinuxCNC ISO, utilizes the extra GPIO from the Pi 4)
  • pico2 + Raspberry Pi4 (same as above)
  • pico + PI ZERO2W (uses SPI connection, LinuxCNC runs with linuxcncrsh, tested on Bookworm with patched kernel 6.13.2.5-rt5-v7+)
  • pico2 + PI ZERO2W (same as above, able to use the extra GPIO from the ZERO2W)
  • Stepper Ninja official breakout board (needs a pico and a W5500 module)

• Breakout-board v1.0 - Digital version: 16 optically isolated inputs, 8 optically isolated outputs, 4 step generators (differential output), 2 high-speed encoder inputs, 2 12-bit DAC outputs (unipolar).

• step-generator: max 8 with pico 1, max 12 with pico2. 1 MHz per channel. Pulse width is set from a HAL pin (96 ns - 6300 ns with a 125 MHz pico, 60 ns - 4000 ns with a 200 MHz pico).

• quadrature-encoder: max 8 with pico1, max 12 with pico2. High speed, zero-pulse handling, and velocity estimation for low-resolution encoders.

• digital I/O: you can configure the free pins of the pico as inputs and outputs.

• PWM: you can configure up to 16 GPIOs for PWM output (1900 Hz with 16-bit resolution up to 1 MHz with 7-bit resolution), and you can choose active-low or active-high behavior.

• Software:

  • LinuxCNC HAL driver supporting multiple instances (max 4), with safety functions (timeout, data checks).

• Open-Source: code and docs under MIT License.

• ready-to-run: prebuilt breakout board UF2 images and the HAL driver are in the binary directory. To install the HAL driver, copy stepgen-ninja.so to your local hal-driver directory.

• supporters: all active sponsors at or above $15 get access to the private breakout board repository for personal use, including production files such as Gerbers, BOM, and component positions.

• extra I/O: the I/O expander for the breakout board supports up to 64 inputs and 32 outputs total (with 3 expanders, 24 V optically isolated).

• new breakout boards: type 2 has 96 optically isolated inputs and 32 outputs. Type 3 has 4 high-speed encoders and 4 bipolar analog outputs.

• user breakout board code: breakoutboard_user.c and breakoutboard_hal_user.c were added to the modules directory for makers to make integration easier.

Contributors

• code: atrex66, pippin88

• testing: Jimfong1, Griletos

• supporters: Griletos, Cofhal, Sunhapas

Discord

• Request a fresh Discord invite in Discussions.

License

• The quadrature encoder PIO program uses BSD-3 license by Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd.
• The ioLibrary_Driver is licensed under the MIT License by Wiznet.