I have a need to use the pulses in the q1 module and scale several different ways.
It would be nice if I could choose a virtual axis that follows the counts on the real axis.
Then I could set new scaling in the virtual that kept track of something else.
example 1 :
q1 module is rotary axis that is set to cutlength of material.
virtual axis is linear footage counter.
Example 2 :
Q1 module is a rotary axis scaled for Reference to another axis.
Virtual axis is rotary axis to give degrees of rotation on tach.
One thing you could do for now is make a user program that has one step that always converts the feedback and writes it to a variable.
The next version of RMCTools (to be released very soon) has features that allow you to make sure certain tasks will not halt due to an axis halt, so therefore you can make sure your conversion user program will always run, once it is started.
You could also gear the virtual axis to the real axis. The gear ratio would give you a way to setup the different scale values. The only thing you would have to cal is the position of the virtual axis on start up then start gearing.
Using gearing or filtering? On a reference axis the actual position, velocity and acceleration ( PVA ) can be filtered to provide a filtered or smoothed target PVA. There will be steady state Kalman filters added by June. The steady state Kalman filter will be better for applications like your where the position can’t suffer from lag due to filtering.
Why not just accumulate the cut length and multiply that by a scale factor to convert inches to ft or inches to meters?
I don’t understand the question. I thought your system was scaled in degrees. You can accumulate degrees too. Accumulating degrees or feet should not take another task.