Hi. I know there will be projects out there to control an engraver but that isn't really what I want and I am not sure how to describe it to be able to search.
The engraver is a pretty much standard package from Vevor. I have a PC which controls it via USB direct to the machine. I would like to set up the engraver in a different location but this would mean setting up a different method of communication. I have a good household wide network with cable access as well as wireless with a number of devices on so the infrastructure is there and sound. I was wondering if there was anything already developed to use an Arduino as a receiver for the engraver and to allow the PC to control it over the network.
I'm an experienced C++ developer and also have a lot of hardware experience in circuit5 design so I can deal with nuts and bolts and code is not at all frightening. Any thoughts and guidance would be welcome.
I can see the idea of simply using a long USB cable to the remote location and directly connecting the PC and engraver but that has definite tight restrictions on length of cable. Using hardware convertors at each end connected with a long network cable could be possible if I am reading things correctly. Hard wiring direct seems a bit clunky and stiff with a good 1Gb backbone already available.
I wondered if there was any existing way to convert the PC command stream from its USB base to network traffic, pump it out over the network to, say, an Arduino USB connected to the engraver, and use the Arduino to simply pass on the command data to the engraver. Maybe this is a flawed view of things and there are good reasons why it is impossible but it is how I would have approached the job.