cncjs-pendant-keyboard

This is a pendant to control cncjs. It allows you to configure a keyboard or numberic keypad to send commands to your cnc controller. Two keyboards (or keyboard layouts) come predefined but you can configure any other type of keyboard.

Installation

1. Install cncjs
2. clone cncjs-pendant-keyboard
3. install
4. configure
5. setup startup

clone cncjs-pendant-keyboard

git clone https://github.com/jochenderwae/cncjs-pendant-keyboard.git

install

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0-dev libudev-dev

cd cncjs-pendant-keyboard
sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm

configure

To configure the keyboard, you'll need to run cncjs-pendant-keyboard twice.

• First to choose the keyboard you want to configure and prepare the OS for it
• Second time to set up the keybindings

After this setup, cncjs-pendant-keyboard is ready to be used.

Choose keyboard

node bin/cncjs-pendant-keyboard

• You'll be asked what port you want to use. Choose the same as your cncjs setup
• Next you'll see a list of all keyboards found on the system. Select the one you want to use for the pendant
• The application will output what commands you need to run next (these will install a configuration file to allow cncjs-pendant-keyboard to access the keyboard you've chosen.

Setup keymapping

node bin/cncjs-pendant-keyboard

Choose whatever setup method you prefer. At the end the configuration will be saved and cncjs-pendant-keyboard is ready to be used.

setup startup

pm2 start $(which cncjs-pendant-keyboard) -- -p "/dev/ttyUSB0"
pm2 save

Keymapping

.cncrc

All keyboard settings and the keymap are stored in ~/.cncrc. You can edit the .cncrc file to build the keyboard settings and keymap or use one of the menus in cncjs-pendant-keyboard to do it.

Keyboard configuration format

When editing .cncrc directly, add a "keyboard":{} section. it should look something like this:

  "keyboards": [
    {
      "vendorId": 12345,
      "productId": 12345,
      "xinputName": "keyboard:Keyboard brand and model name",
      "keymap": {
        "42": {
          "amount": 0.1,
          "description": "Backspace: x0.1"
        },
        "83": {
          "toggleRepeat": true,
          "description": "Num Lock: repeat on/off"
        },
        "86": {
          "command": "pause",
          "description": "-: Pause"
        },
        "89": {
          "grbl": "G91 Z-{amount}",
          "canRepeat": true,
          "description": "1: z-"
        },
        "91": {
          "grbl": "M3 S0",
          "description": "3: spindle off"
        }
      }
    }
  ]

Keyboards The keyboards property should contain an array of keyboard objects. You can add multiple objects but at this time only the first one is used in the application.

Property	Description
vendorId	The keyboard USB vendorId. Run usb-devices to see the list of devices with their names and ids. Keep in mind that in the output they're written as hexadecimal number and you need to fill them in here as decimals.
productId	The keyboard USB productId
xinputName	"keyboard:" followed by the name of the keyboard. Run xinput --list to see which ones are connected now.
keymap	A map of USB HID keyboard scan codes and the actions to perform when pressed.

Keymap actions

Property	Description
amount	Set the amount to fill in a GRBL command. Use this to set the distance a movement command moves the spindle
grbl	Send GRBL command to the CNC controller. {amount} is substituted with the current amount (set by the amount property)
command	Send on of the cncjs commands (start, stop, pause, resume, ...
toggleRepeat	Set repeat on or off. When on, a command that has canRepeat set to true will be repeated every 150 ms while the button is pressed
canRepeat	If set to true, this command can be repeated. If false, holding the key will do nothing more then pressing the key
description	Does functionally nothing, only used to add a description to the keybinding. This can be omitted.

Multiple properties of a keymap action can be filled in. If that's the case, they're processed in the order noted above.

Menu based configuration: "Predefined keymaps"

When setting up the keymap using the cncjs-pendant-keyboard menu, you can select the predefined keymaps to set:

• the original layout
• or this layout

┌──────┬──────┬──────┬──────┐
│Repeat│  x10 │  x1  │  x.1 │
├──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┤
│  Z+  │  X+  │ S.On │ Pause│
├──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┤
│  Y-  │ Home │  Y+  │Resume│
├──────┼──────┼──────┼──────┤
│  Z-  │  X-  │ S.Off│      │
├──────┴──────┼──────┤ Stop │
│Set cur. to 0│ Start│      │
└─────────────┴──────┴──────┘