Mission Statement

Machinekit is a platform for machine control applications.

Machinekit is portable across a wide range of hardware platforms and real-time environments, and delivers excellent performance at low cost. It is based on the HAL component architecture, an intuitive and easy to use circuit model that includes over 150 building blocks for digital logic, motion, control loops, signal processing, and hardware drivers. Machinekit supports local and networked UI options, including ubiquitous platforms like phones or tablets.

Community participation is key to Machinekit’s success, and contributions are desired from as many people as possible. Therefore, we adopt the Collective Code Construction Contract (C4, Rev. 1), a proven collaboration model developed by other successful projects such as ØMQ.

Project Direction

The Machinekit project direction is the sum of documented problems: everybody is invited to describe and discuss a problem in the github issue tracker. Contributed solutions to those problems will be merged according to C4 rules, which are designed to encourage participation.

Some problem fields we initially focus on are:

• laying the groundwork for user interface platforms like tablets and phones
• widening applicability to general automation tasks beyond CNC machine control
• removing fundamental limitations like ‘everything in a single memory space’