Project Structure and Motate

Project Structure (High-level)

The g2core project consists of two code bases: g2Core, and Motate.

g2core firmware is all of the motion-control, motor-control, communications protocol, etc. portions that represent the "business logic" of the firmware. The g2Core project is housed at http://github.com/synthetos/g2 and doesn't contain any hardware-specific code except to wire g2Core-based hardware (such as the TinyG v9, Arduino Due) to the Motate layer.

Motate is the interface between the project and the hardware itself. It's designed to be project-agnostic, and even though it's developed in tandem with g2Core, it may be used for other projects as well.

Project Directory Structure

The directory structure of the g2Core project in brief:

• ./ - Top level the directory resulting from a git clone
  • g2core/ - contains all of the code of the g2Core firmware, excluding what directly deals with the hardware.
    • board/ - contains all of the board-specific code that is used to inform the rest of the code about available hardware resources, such as how many motor drivers (and what type) , serial ports, USB interfaces, etc. are available.
      • Each directory inside the board directory is the name of a board, and contains the code necessary for that hardware.
    • device/ - contains all of the code for specialized devices, such as step-direction-based stepper motor drivers, NeoPixel driver, etc.
      • Each directory inside device is a specific class of device. The board makefiles then add the device directories they need to the compile, and the board-specific code imports and handles integrating these devices with the core code.
      • There should not be code directly in the device directory. It should all be in subdirectories.
    • settings/ - contains the files to configure the default settings of the firmware for a specific machine type.
      • The machine type should not be confused with the board. The board is the electronics that drive the machine. These settings are for the machine, and should be as board-agnostic as makes sense for that machine.
      • Settings files have the name pattern of settings_machine type.h
      • Examples: settings_othermill.h, settings_Printrbot_Simple_1608.h
      • settings_default.h is called automatically after the selected settings file, and provides any #defines not already #defined in the selected settings file. The values in the default file result in a machine that is functional (i.e. communicates), but with most active devices disabled.
  • Motate/ - is a git submodule that houses a reference to a specific commit of in the Motate repo. (Here's a nice writeup on submodule on GitHub as well.)
    • The Motate project handles all of the communications directly to the hardware, and allows the g2Core project to be highly portable to other processors.
• Resources/ - contains additional, non-code related resources, such as images for documentation, additional debugging helper scripts, etc.

Where to go from here

Please check out Getting Started with g2core.