Test GUI for Grbl without Arduino using the Simulator and virtual com port under GNU Linux.

My Arduino is not accabale right now but I wanted to look at a new GUI or gcode sender program for Grbl called SourceRabbit GCode Sender. I already had the simulator compiled and ready to go and the next step was just to find a way to connect both together. I found that the program socat can do just this:

socat -d -d pty,raw,echo=0,link=/tmp/ttyV0 pty,raw,echo=0,link=/tmp/ttyV1

This creates two virtual serial ports with the names /tmp/ttyV0 and /tmp/ttyV1 and connect both together. Now I just need to direct the output and input of Grbl to one of the virtual serial ports:

./grbl_sim -n > /tmp/ttyV0 < /tmp/ttyV0

To test if this works I can use a command line terminal program like miniterm and connect to the other virtual serial port

miniterm.py /tmp/ttyV1

Now that everything is working I can finally test the new SourceRabbit GCode Sender program.

3 thoughts on “Test GUI for Grbl without Arduino using the Simulator and virtual com port under GNU Linux.”

  1. First, you can t use that hex file on a 2560 because it is for the uno which has different pin numbers you need a hex file specific to the 2560. Is that arduino something you got with the laser cutter or did you set it up yourself? If it came with the laser cutter then it should already have grbl on it. Or are you replacing different software with grbl?

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