##Overview
Ground Control is the program which allows you to control the Maslow machine.
From within Ground Control, you can move the machine to where you want to begin a cut, calibrate the machine, open and run a g-code file, or monitor the progress of an ongoing cut.
At present, the UI looks like this:
Ground Control is written in the python programing language. Python was chosen because it is a language with good cross platform support and is relatively simple to start working with. Two of the goals of Ground Control are that it run on as many platforms as possible, and that it is as easy as possible for members of the community to contribute to making the program better.
##Setup Ground Control is built using the 2.7.x version of the python language. 2.7 was chosen instead of 3.x because the support for compiling binaries for the 3.x version is not good enough yet. Maslow uses the Kivy framework for the UI (https://kivy.org/#home) and the pyserial module for USB communication (https://pythonhosted.org/pyserial/).
###Installing Python To setup your computer to run Ground Control from the source code, first install python version 2.7.x, available for free here: https://www.python.org/downloads/
Once you have installed python 2.7.x open the command prompt and type
>python --version
You should then see something similar to this:
Python 2.7.11
If python does not open, it is most likely an issue with needing to add python to you PATH. You can find out more information about that here: http://superuser.com/questions/143119/how-to-add-python-to-the-windows-path
Next, you need to install Kivy and Pyserial. Fortunately, python comes with a built in package manager which will install both of them for you. The python package manager is called pip.
###Installing pyserial
To install pyserial, type:
>python -m pip install pyserial
and let pip do it's magic.
###Installing Kivy
Installing Kivy is a little more complicated. First, check to make sure your version of pip is up to date by running:
>python -m pip install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools
Then install dependencies by running:
python -m pip install docutils pygments pypiwin32 kivy.deps.sdl2 kivy.deps.glew
and finally install Kivy by running:
python -m pip install kivy
If you have any questions or issues with this process please get in touch through the forums at http://www.maslowcnc.com/forums/#!/dev . If you had any issues which you were able to resolve, please consider editing this README file to correct the parts which were unclear.
##How To Run Ground Control
Ground Control can be run from the command line using the command
>python cncgc.py
run from within the folder where cncgc.py is located.
If you are looking for a binary version of the software, check the releases on this page or visit our website at www.maslowcnc.com. As of this writing, no binaries or installers for the newest version of Ground Control are available because the software is still evolving so rapidly.
##How To Contribute Maslow is an open source project, get involved.
If you find a bug in the software, report it here through GitHub!
If you have an idea for a new feature, let us know in the forums at http://www.maslowcnc.com/forums/#!/dev
If you want to get involved, say hi in the forums http://www.maslowcnc.com/forums/#!/dev or if you've already jumped in and started making the software better, feel free to submit a pull request! You can learn more about how to do that here: https://help.github.com/articles/creating-a-pull-request/
##Current Program Data Flow
