The FabMo Engine

The FabMo engine is host software that connects to a G2 motion control platform and manages it, exposing a web interface. The engine serves the following major functions:

• Streaming of G-Code files to G2
• Monitoring of G2 motion state and cycle progress
• Storage and management of files (that currently cannot be stored on G2)
• Interpretation of the OpenSBP (ShopBot) language
• Hosting of the "FabMo Dashboard" a web frontend to the FabMo Engine that provides an app hosting environment

Documentation

Source Code Documentation

API Documentation

Quick Start

1. Install nodejs - The officially supported version is v0.12.7 - Newer versions do not work at this time
2. Check out the source code https://github.com/ShopBotTools/FabMo-Engine.git
3. From inside the source directory, install all of the engine dependencies with npm install
4. Create the engine data directory at /opt/fabmo or C:\opt\fabmo if you're on windows. Set the permissions on this directory so that the user running the engine can read/write to it.
5. Start the engine with npm run debug for development mode or npm start for production mode.
6. On Windows it is unlikely that the default COM port settings are satisfactory. After running the engine once, edit C:\fabmo\config\engine.json and set the two COM ports for your platform with the appropriate values for your system.

** Note that you should not need to run the engine as a privileged user. If you have to run your engine using sudo check your node installation and the permissions settings for the /opt/fabmo directory **

When the engine starts, it will connect to G2 and setup an http server to accept connections on port 80. Once the engine is running you can visit http://localhost/ to use the fabmo dashboard.

Installing the Engine

The engine is run from source, and only needs to be checked out and stored in a local directory. Run npm install from the source directory to install the needed dependencies.

On the Intel Edison

To install the engine in the "standard" location on the Intel Edison, perform the following steps.

1. Checkout the source into /fabmo with git clone https://github.com/FabMo/FabMo-Engine /fabmo
2. Install dependencies using npm: cd /fabmo; npm install
3. Install the systemd service file cp /fabmo/files/fabmo.service /etc/systemd/system
4. Set the appropriate permissions on the service file chmod 0775 /etc/systemd/system/fabmo.service
5. Inform systemd of the unit file change systemctl daemon-reload
6. Enable the new service systemctl enable fabmo
7. Start the new service immediately systemctl start fabmo
8. After the engine has had time to start, check its status: systemctl status fabmo

On the Raspberry Pi 3

To install the engine in the "standard" location on the Raspberry Pi 3, perform the following steps.

1. Checkout the source into /fabmo with git clone https://github.com/FabMo/FabMo-Engine /fabmo
2. Checkout the appropriate branch of the source tree. The release branch is the most recent stable release. (git checkout release)
3. Install dependencies using npm: cd /fabmo; npm install
4. Run the engine using the instructions below

On Mac OS X

To install the engine in the standard location on a Mac, follow the steps below. This method is used by the FabMo team for development in the OSX environment.

1. Install Node.js - You'll need an older version: 0.12.7 to be compatible with FabMo. To install an older version through homebrew (homebrew is highly recommended) do this: http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/207883/67692
2. Install npm - you can also do this with homebrew
3. Create the fabmo directory: mkdir -p /fabmo
4. Create the fabmo data directory: mkdir -p /opt/fabmo
5. Clone the engine source /fabmo/engine with git clone https://github.com/FabMo/FabMo-Engine /fabmo/engine
6. Checkout the appropriate branch of the source tree. The release branch is the most recent stable release. (git checkout release from the /fabmo/engine directory)
7. Install dependencies using npm: cd /fabmo/engine; npm install
8. Run the engine using the instructions below. Make sure that the G2 motion control board is connected the first time you run the engine. The engine auto-detects the USB port and saves this setting on first run, and if the motion controller is absent, it won't be properly detected. If you need to change ports later on, the port settings are located in /opt/fabmo/config/engine.json

Running the Engine

For debugging the engine, you can run it directly from the command prompt with npm start or node server.js Running with npm run debug puts the engine in debug mode, in which it does more agressive app reloading. (This is recommended for app development, particularly for system apps) npm debug slow introduces deliberate network latency on GET/POST requests, for testing. This latency can be adjusted in engine.js

Development Automation

A number of grunt tasks have been set up to facilitate engine development. To see them, run grunt with no arguments in the source directory, and a list will be produced with explanations.