Teach simulator several command line options to control console output
of info messages, gcode traces, data_recorder output, etc.
Also move gcode output to sim_gcode instead of sending directly to
datarecorder.
Wow! It took something like two years to expose (and get
developer attention of) such a bug: the checksum was calculated
based on the uppercased characters parsed, not the ones actually
received over the line.
These were commits 9dbfa7217e0de8b140846ab480d6b4a7fc9b6791 and
2b596cb05e621ed822071486f812eb334328267a.
There are several reasons why this new approach didn't work out well:
- The machine coordinate system is lost on relative movements.
OK, we could keep tracking it, but this would mean even more
code, so even more chances for bugs.
- With the lost coordinate system, no software endstops are possible.
- Neither of X, Y, Z will ever overflow.
- If a movement planner would appear one day, he'd have to handle
relative movements as well. Even more code duplication.
Instead of converting them to absolute first, then back to
relative and having all the fuzz with working on the queue's
start vs. working at the queue's end, mark a movement as relative
and use this directly.
This is a intrusive patch and for now, it's done for the X axis only.
To make comparison with the former approach easier ...
The advantages of this change:
- Converting from mm to steps in gcode_parse.c and back in dda.c
wastes cycles and accuracy.
- In dda.c, UM_PER_STEP simply goes away, so distance calculations
work now with STEPS_PER_MM > 500 just fine. 1/16 microstepping
on threaded rods (Z axis) becomes possible.
- Distance calculations (feedrate, acceleration, ...) become much
simpler.
- A wide range of STEPS_PER_M can now be handled at reasonable
(4 decimal digit) accuracy with a simple macro. Formerly,
we were limited to 500 steps/mm, now we can do 4'096 steps/mm
and could easily raise this another digit.
Disadvantages:
- STEPS_PER_MM is gone in config.h, using STEPS_PER_M is required,
because the preprocessor refuses to compare numbers with decimal
points in them.
- The DDA has to store the position in steps anyways to avoid
rounding errors.
& tests of the debug_flags. Currently the compiler is able to eliminate
the block and the & operation when the constant is zero, but since
the debug_flags variable is a volatile the compiler does not eliminate
the load of the variable. By pretesting and shortcutting the load is
eliminated. Saves a small number of bytes when the debug build is
disabled and costs nothing when it is enabled.
This is without accuracy or other losses and should finally make
decfloat_to_int() free of variable overflow within the decribed
ranges. Surprisingly, this costs 14 bytes program size.
Markus Hitter
Phil Hord
Jim McGee
Ben Jackson
Michael Moon
Markus Amsler
Stephan Walter