Ok that is your problem, the driver is not loaded.
Go to the Mach3 folder and double click the drivertest.exe and let it run. It will say pulsing too fast or something but once done your driver should be installed.
You can then re-open Mach again and hopefully it will be fine. I am of course assuming you are using the parallel port and not an external controller.
Hood

That worked!!!

Thank you so much! I now have spindle DRO through emulating the index!!!

Next up I can try to get my rigged up optical reader working and hopefully I can eventually thread.

I really appreciate all of your support, there is no way in the world I would have figured that out. I have been reading this stuff and searching and nowhere did I find this stuff.

Much thanks, I will report back when I get some time to try the actual optical reader.

Ok but disable the emulation when trying the real index, sometimes emulation can stop things working. Cant remember if the Index is one of the things but best to disable anyway.
Hood

Will do, thanks!

Well, no luck and I ran out of time.

I had my arduino switching 5.5 volts to zero with every revolution measured by multimeter, tried to set it up on my G540 and did not work.

I touched my multimeter on the 10 Pin and the ground and was no longer getting low pulses, only a continuous high pulse.

Something happened with my rigged connections .

Ran out of time today,
Hopefully will get some time tomorrow.

In the meantime I have some digital Hall effect switches on order so that will hopefully be a better solution long term.

Thanks again for all your help Hood, really appreciate it.

I'm curious why you're using a hall effect sensor.  Won't the magnet tend to pick up some of the ferrous metal swarf flying around and cause problems?   Seems like an opto sensor would increase the odds of it working more consistently?  My lathe has a knack for throwing debris into the strangest places. 

The only reason is that I cannot find the opto sensor that Hood recommended, it seems to be discontinued.

The hall sensors I bought were really cheap, about $1.5 a piece plus shipping, so I spent about $5 on them and I could use the for other applications if I don't use them for this.


Right now I am debugging a problem I just cannot figure out, this one is bizarre.

My mocked up opto sensor using ir and an arduino is working absolutely perfectly when not hooked up to the G540 board. I get 0 volts when my ir detects black, and 4.8v when it detects white, very consistently and very fast switching.

for some reason I just cannot understand, when I take the exact same wires that I have coming out of my arduino that I am measuring with my multimeter, and plug them into the G540, the voltage is only getting up to 1.1V when it sees white, and 0 v on black.

I don't believe that is going to be enough to trigger the index switch, but I have not tried it actually plugged in to Mach3 right now since I am doing the electronics in my house.

At first I thought maybe there was some resistor in the pin, so I took a battery pack that I have that delivers 6v and set that up in the same pins, and the G540 pin is measuring 5.8v accurately, so it's not the G540 pin.

My G540 is not plugged in right now, just trying to hook up all the electronics and get it working before hooking it up to my lathe again.

I tried different wires, same thing. I am at a complete loss on this.

I'm curious why you're using a hall effect sensor.

DICKEYBIRD,
Provides for easy installation of an index /  sensor in places you would not be able to use a disk.
Dosen't pick up junk if it's covered. Personaly I would apply KISS principle and not have it's ouput based on
another piece of software such as the Auduino. Nothing wrong with a disk and sensor though.

RICH

So I finally got my IR sensor working the way I intended and hooked up to my G540 board.

Basically I have a digital output from my arduino going to input pin 1, and a ground from my arduino going to pin 12 , which is power supply GND.

When my IR detects black, it sends 0 volts to the G540, when it detects white, it sends 4.9 v.

I verified this on the G540 board with a multimeter, and watched it toggle successfully between 300mv and 4.9v when the G540 is powered on.

I have my inputs in Mach3 set to the proper pins, turned off emulate, and I am not able to get a green light on my index light in the diagnostics area no matter what I do.

I tried with active low both on and off, nothing.

So I am now once again at a loss. I have my IR and wiring doing exactly what I wanted on my G540, and no index.

Can anyone confirm for me that this is what I should be doing, sending a ~5v signal on and off to my G540 and to Mach 3?

I am so frustrated with this, I have spend so many hours it's crazy.

While I know a lot of that time has been on my mocked up switch via arduino, most of the exercise would need to be done with an opto or hall switch anyway since what I have been trying to do is send 5 v on and off to my G540.

You might need 12v for the Gecko input.
Check this out:   
http://www.machsupport.com/forum/index.php/topic,15978.0.html
Russ