Smoothie on a breadbaord using OM13054

This Is it possible to replace the LPC1796 with the Cortex M4f variant? I still haven't decided if I want to go through with a DIY method but would like to know how much of a problem it would be to use the M4.

The board you link to appears to be designed as a debug interface board rather than a dev board, so I am not sure how far you will get with that. I would look at something like [www.nxp.com]

I bought a board off ebay which was cheaper and has more pins available, [www.ebay.co.uk], but the pins have 2mm pitch.

As for Smoothieware, porting to other processors than LPC1769 could be problematic, AFAIK no one has successfully ported it yet. The Smoothie core needs some tidying up to make it portable, then you also need an mbed library or write equivalent routines for your target CPU. Portability doesn't seem to be a high priority for Smoothie, but there was talk of porting to LPC43xx so maybe that will change.

I think the best bet for running Smoothie is to stick with LPC1769 for now, unless you want to do a lot of firmware work. I am hoping to get an LPCXpresso hooked up to RAMPS-FD running Smoothieware.

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I figured I had an incorrect board link and that it would be more trouble than I would care for As far as using the 1796 board, do you know of any additional documentation beyond the Smoothie on a breadboard page? Part of wanting to go the DIY breadboard route for me is wanting to use the 8825 stepper drivers and wondering if it's possible to hook up more than 5 stepper drivers. The Azteeg X3 Pro looked nice except I'd like to stick with an ARM chip. There is a 5 driver version of the X5 in the works but it won't be available for a little bit and Smoothieboards still aren't available. If the breadboard solution allows me to use drivers I want, higher voltage supplies for them, more drivers total and without a lot of software/firmware tweaking then I'd prefer to build it myself. Thanks for any other help you might provide.

I'm not up to speed with the latest Smoothie developments, the best place to get advice for anything Smoothie related is their IRC channel : [smoothieware.org]

I believe that the Smoothie on a breadboard should still work, but may be a little out of date. Smoothieware continues to evolve, and support for the breadboard option may need updating. I think in principle Smoothieware should be able to support 6 drivers, I don't know if that requires some modification to the code.

I don't want to dissuade you from doing a breadboard version, but I have a prototype board designed to run Smoothieware with RAMPS-FD, which would give you 6 steppers and 8825 compatible. There are not quite enough pins on the LPCXpresso for RAMPS-FD, my long term goal is to create a LPC1769 base board.

I've had little time to do much with it apart from run a "blinky" code, so if anyone is interested in helping with hardware/software development, I have spare PCBs or could make assembled boards available. It's mostly untested, so you would need some experience with low-level stuff.


Smoothie-RAMPS-FD by donotdespisethesnake, on Flickr

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What is Open Source?
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I emailed Arthur Wolf and he informed me that the breadboard route has issues. He also let me know that the production Smoothieboard could theoretically run 8 or 9 steppers total and that it's in the works to port Smoothie over to the LCP4330 which is the M4/M0. I'm going to wait for the production boards to be available.

That's kinda what I heard. There have been a few attempts before to port Smoothieware to other platforms but they seem to fizzle out. Smoothieware is getting pretty big and rapidly changing, making porting a large task. The LPC4330 is a great chip, quite a complex beast though, it might take a while for that to appear with Smoothieware running. I have a LPC4330 dev board to play with, so I might try making an adapter for RAMPS-FD or the Decapede board.

I looked at porting Smoothiware to the Due, but it is a bigger task than I have time for, it would be easier if Mbed was on the Due but that might not happen for a long time, Atmel have put their backing behind the Arduino, which is sort of a competitor to Mbed.

I decided the quickest way to get Smoothie running with RAMPS-FD was to use the same chip as current Smoothie boards, but maybe one day all the things Arthur talks about will actually happen!

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What is Open Source?
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Open Source in a nutshell: the Four Freedoms
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Sounds like you're saying that what Arthur talks about are more pipe dreams than anything, did I miss something? I am new to this so I'm assuming I did. Do you think that the production Smoothieboards won't be available in about the 2 weeks he said they would be?

Hi, late response here, but I am very interested in your approach to make the lxpresso compatible with ramps-fd, which I have, and was looking to do myself.

Do you still have spare boards or the design files so I could recreate your work please?