First 3D printer electronics with built-in WiFi released

Those of you looking to choose an advanced controller for your next 3D printer may be interested in the new Duet WiFi. Not only does it have on-board Wifi - allowing complete control of the printer and gcode file upload from your browser - it also provides up to 256x microstepping for quiet operating, and an ARM Cortex M4 processor with built-in floating point arithmetic. For more details, visit [www.duet3d.com] or the Duet section of this forum.





The firmware (RepRapFirmware) is already open source, and the hardware source files will be released when the first production batch ships.

I believe this is of general interest, so I hope I will be forgiven for posting this here. I suggest that any technical questions about the Duet WiFi be asked on the Duet forum.

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2016 06:56PM by dc42.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

That looks absolutely fantastic! Congratulations, I hope it sells well.

I'm not 100% on my emoticon usage, but this one looks appropriate:

Quote
JamesK
That looks absolutely fantastic! Congratulations, I hope it sells well.

I'm not 100% on my emoticon usage, but this one looks appropriate:

Thanks, I could do with a beer after all the work I have put in over the last few days! There's still a lot more firmware for me to write to get the best out of the Duet WiFi, for example to implement dynamically-varying microstepping, motor stall detection, and stepper driver temperature management.

One of our beta testers has posted a brief report at [forums.reprap.org]. He was familiar with an older version of thew Duet already, so he didn't have much of a learning curve to go through.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2016 06:11PM by dc42.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

...can I skip upgrading from the Duet v0.6 to the v0.8.5...and go straight for the DuetWiFi ?

Quote
PlasticPogle
...can I skip upgrading from the Duet v0.6 to the v0.8.5...and go straight for the DuetWiFi ?

Yes, of course! There are a couple of points to be aware of when upgrading from a Duet to a Duet WiFi:

* Maximum recommended input voltage is 25V, down from 30V on the Duet. So if you are using a 24V power supply and you have turned the voltage up to more than 25V, turn it back down again.

* The WiFi antenna is on the edge of the board where the Ethernet socket was. So don't enclose that part of the board in a metal case, or the WiFi signal won't get through.

Pre-orders for the Duet WiFi are being taken at [www.duet3d.com]. There is also a forum for the Duet WiFi on that site, intended for beta testers and those with pre-production boards, but visible to all.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Would have been nice to also have a UFL connector for external antenna support.
Any specific reasons for not implementing that?

Quote
Mikk36
Would have been nice to also have a UFL connector for external antenna support.
Any specific reasons for not implementing that?

Yes, a separate antenna makes getting FCC approval much harder.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2016 01:22PM by dc42.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Even the possibility to mount one, but not supplying the antenna?
How about pads for soldering one on by the customer?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2016 02:36PM by Mikk36.

Quote
Mikk36
Even the possibility to mount one, but not supplying the antenna?
How about pads for soldering one on by the customer?

That would be ideal, then we would be able to supply just one variant of the Duet WiFi, knowing that any technically-capable user could convert it to external antenna. But that's only possible if the manufacturer provides that facility on a CE and FCC certified module. We're using the popular ESP8266 modules, and the only ones with certification have built in antenna and no pads to let you change that. We are making a few pre-production boards using the ESP-07 variant which does support an external antenna, but it is not certified, and the flash memory chip is uses is too small to provide for reasonable future expansion of the firmware and web interface.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I received my beta unit yesterday and got it hooked up. It replaced a Duet 0.85 in my delta. The new drivers greatly reduce both noise and vibration. Previously when printing slowly you could feel vibration in the carriage if you rested a finger lightly on it. Now that vibration is all but gone. I've only tried the default 16 micro steps with interpolation to 256, I'm going to try some different micro stepping rates to see if there's a difference in print quality. For the few things I've printed so far I think that the reduced vibration has led to a small increase in print quality, especially in taller finer structures. Wifi is working well, faster than the 0.85 and wireless range extender I was using previous. The newer web interface with the pop up error messages is really nice as well.
Very pleased, definitely an upgrade over the 0.85. Great work David and TP3D! My original plan was to use this in the H bot I'm amassing parts for, but I think it's going to stay in the delta and I'll just have to buy another one

I just tried the preorder page to take advantage of the historical low British pound, but paypal hasn't heard of it yet
Still on top of my wishlist for next month or so...

Regarding the external WiFi antenna:
Wouldn't it be nice to have a replaceable WiFi board? ESP8266 is available with an 4x2 header...
This way a customer who doesn't need ( or doesn't care about ) FCC and CE certification can choose a module on their own.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2016 01:08PM by o_lampe.

The ESP8266 modules with the 4x2 header are not FCC certified, have insufficient flash memory for us, and do not have the high speed SPI pins that we need for fast file upload to the SD card on the main board.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
o_lampe
Regarding the external WiFi antenna:
Wouldn't it be nice to have a replaceable WiFi board? ESP8266 is available with an 4x2 header...
This way a customer who doesn't need ( or doesn't care about ) FCC and CE certification can choose a module on their own.

You know, with OSHW you could just spin up your own variant. It's always nice from the customer perspective to get what you want in optional configurations. It's another thing entirely for the manufacturers to produce, stock, and support multiple variants. For a product with a somewhat limited market to start with, I think that we should be happy such tech exists in the first place, especially given that they tell you how to make it so you can make your own "dream" board.

Quote
dc42
The ESP8266 modules with the 4x2 header are not FCC certified, have insufficient flash memory for us, and do not have the high speed SPI pins that we need for fast file upload to the SD card on the main board.

Oh, you got the SPI upload working - that's fantastic. Great job !!

Quote
JamesK

Quote
dc42
The ESP8266 modules with the 4x2 header are not FCC certified, have insufficient flash memory for us, and do not have the high speed SPI pins that we need for fast file upload to the SD card on the main board.

Oh, you got the SPI upload working - that's fantastic. Great job !!

Yes, we can upload gcode files over WiFi to the SD card on the Duet WiFi at about 800 kbytes/sec.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2016 03:08PM by dc42.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Is it possible to run a webcam off this board? As I type this, it sounds ridiculous but if it did, it would be a real octoprint competitor for me. Right now I use ramps 1.4 + octoprint for a similar set of features as the duet Wifi. I know of the other benefits of course (although many are only features for delta).

It's possible to include an image from an IP camera in the web interface. Currently the camera has to be capable of returning a static jpeg image in response to an http request, and not all IP cameras can do this.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Thanks dc42, that is a great help. Look forward to receiving it.