FAQ

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• FAQ and Troubleshooting
  • µCNC is not communicating
  • µCNC is communicating but its always in ALARM mode

FAQ and Troubleshooting

µCNC is not communicating

If you are not getting any communication from µCNC try the following:

• Try a simple serial terminal like Putty or Termite and send a ? char to see if the board replies.
• If you have a pin connected to a led on your board you can configure DOUT31 pin. This pin is usually internally assigned to the activity LED inside the µCNC firmware. If the firmware is running correctly it should at least blink with a 1 second rate. It also blinks faster when communications are being processed.

µCNC is communicating but its always in ALARM mode

There are several reasons for this and you need to check them one by one. Again I recommend using a simple serial terminal like Putty or Termite to debug this:

• Open a terminal and send a ? char to get the board status. If the status message contains Pn: informations you need to check what is being triggered. If you have defined Control Pins (like the emergency stop pin), make sure that they are correctly wired. You can confirm the status of these pins in the status message.
• Every time you upload µCNC for the first time, or you modify some settings that causes the settings structure to be modified, or the existing settings have some kind of corrupted data, the board will go to ALARM mode automatically, and will only allow unlocking after the user completely resets the board settings with the $RST=* command. This is a security measure to prevent you from running the machine with incorrect configurations and accidentally crash it.