New Arduino's with better USB support

Hi all,

For those who have been living in a cardboard box lately:

The new Arduino's have a different and better USB architecture, using an Atmel chip instead of FTDI. They use LUFA as a stack. Might bring much better USB support to Reprap:

[arduino.cc]
[twitter.com]
[www.fourwalledcubicle.com]

Quote
arduino.cc
Hardware
We are launching two new board and announcing some upcoming products.

Arduino Uno

This board will replace the Duemilanove. We decided to be nice to the non-italians and use a name that was simpler to pronounce and write. Uno means one in italian and this board for us is the basic building block of the Arduino product line. We replaced the aging FTDI chipset with a custom made usb-serial converter built with an Atmel ATmega8U2 this provides lower latency and doesn’t require to install any drivers on mac and linux (on windows all you need is a simple .inf file) more advanced users will be able to reprogram the USB chip to make the board show up as a variety of USB devices (Keyboards, Mice, Joysticks, MIDI etc)

ToDo worked their magic also on the board redesigning its graphic language keeping the form factor that has become an industry standard.
We believe this strong branding will better differentiate us from the cloners and let customers identify much better the original product.
Finally these boards are fully CE certified with pending FCC certification.

Arduino Mega 2560

An upgrade for the Arduino Mega which will sport the new Atmel USB chip plus an ATMega2560 processor with twice as much flash memory. We’ve been able to obtain some significant savings due improvements in the production process and better pricing from suppliers that we are happy to pass on to customers. This board will have the same graphic design as the UNO.
At the moment, due to limitations in the GCC compiler only 128k of flash are immediately useable but we’re very close to unlocking the whole memory space.

Still only 16 MHz and 8 bit *sigh*

There's a good chance we can't use all these nice new thingies, as the processor simply is not fast enough to handle it. Current microstepping stepper motors could make use of something like 1,000,000 interrupts per second with a few lines of code each.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

... my fastest microstepping boards from IMS have up to 10MHz step clock rate

But for 'normal use' i can run them with 'only' 1/32 microstepping, so it would be 'fast enough' with an Arduino at 16MHz clock ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

"Better" seems a matter of opinion :-)

I bought one of the new Arduino Mega 2560s to try in a RepRap. When you plug it into your Linux box it no longer talks via /dev/ttyUSB0 but via /dev/ttyACM0. Fair enough. But when you try to connect to that port from within a Java program it won't open the port. I've checked for lock files and similar usual suspects...

It must be possible, as the Arduino development environment is Java, and that talks to it.

Damned if I can make it work, though...

Yours

Adrian

"users will be able to reprogram the USB chip to make the board show up as a variety of USB devices"

Perhaps it's possible to program it to be recognized as an old arduino so it will mount in the same place as before?

---

--
-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

... my first idea too was reprogramming of the USB-controller ... but maybe it's more an issue of the right java library for other devices like USB-masters instead of virtual COM?

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Did any resolution come from this?

I've ditched the sanguino due to comms issues meaning I was getting nowhere, so I decided to take the plunge and go for a arduino mega 2560, now I'm struggling with Can't open port: \dev\ttyACM0

Ubuntu 10.10 pololu steppers on stripboard (non working mega!)

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated

PJ

The port should be more like /dev/ttyUSB0 Not \dev\*** And a lot of users only have success once after plugging in the 2560 to the usb port and if they close the connection they have to unplug and plug it back in again.

What are you trying to connect with; arduino IDE, repsnapper, etc?

Hi

Sorry my bad the port is /dev/ttyACM0, I've been using the Rep rap host software, couldn't compile the repsnapper software.

I can connect with the arduino IDE, but not the RepRap host software, I've flashed the bootloader on the mega 2560 still no joy?

I'm currently working through compiling repsnapper, the instructions missed libgtk2.0-dev libboost-thread-dev libboost-system-dev so it wouldnt complie. I will test this shortly

... have you set the correct port and baudrate in the preferences-file in your user-folder?

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Hi

Yep correct port and baudrate in the preference file.

No joy with reprap host software though!

I've managed to compile repsnapper and got a connection to the board but think I need to start a new thread now. (Although it would be nice to sort out the reprap host software issue even tried the latest nightly build and no joy.

I appear to have the same problem as with the sanguino!! my previous issue with the sanguino appears not to be the board after all, when I turn on the power to the reprap I loose comms on the board as i did with the sanguino!! also mouse movement goes sporadic?? no power to the reprap board communicates fine. Doggy power supply possibly, or harmonics??

PJ

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2011 04:00PM by sawjam.

you might have to reflash the atmel usb chip there are instructions here http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1285962838 i have not tried mine under linux yet, but i did have a hell of a time with mine and windows. there was an obscure driver that i needed to find, that i now wish i could remember where it was.

i do hope they have an update out soon for this, i am looking forward to using it with my reprap, but i want it to be more stable than it is.

---

[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

Thanks for the response, tried re flashing with the link below:

[www.wayneandlayne.com]

worked for the arduino IDE stopped miscellaneous avr messages, but didn't solve communication to the mega 2560 with the reprap host software.

Is this a known issue with the Mega 2560 and Reprap host software?

... i have WinXP and RepRap-host working with Gen3 (Sanguino-MB+EC) or Mega1280 and Mega2560 with RAMPS ...

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

it seems to be biting more people in the butt so to speak. i am not up and running just yet, but i need to try getting it going under linux to know more. but has far as i can tell, it is a known issue, but i am not sure just whose issue it is arduino's or reprap's thats kinda where i am stuck, i kinda wish i could reflash it so that it would be seen has the FTDI, that would be the best stop gap solution but not a proper fix.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2011 10:13PM by dissidence.

---

[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

I chased this problem down - it's in the RXTXcomm.jar file distributed with reprap host, it has a list of valid ttys, ttyACMx is not in that list by default

First of all there are 3 librxtx files there:

RXTXcomm.jar librxtxParallel.so librxtxSerial.so

if you replace one you need to replace THEM ALL - if you link the .so files to a new downloaded set you need to link the .jar file too (I suspect this is the real source of a bunch of people's problems) - I'm told that the latest Ubuntu release has this fixed.

I haven't tested that but I built the source from scratch - here's what I did:

Download the very latest source from:

[rxtx.qbang.org]

look in src/gnu/io/RXTXCommDriver.java, around line 580 - you'll find:

String[] Temp = {
"ttyS", // linux Serial Ports
"ttySA", // for the IPAQs
"ttyUSB", // for USB frobs
"rfcomm", // bluetooth serial device
"ttyircomm", // linux IrCommdevices (IrDA serial emu)
};

add the extra line:

String[] Temp = {
"ttyS", // linux Serial Ports
"ttySA", // for the IPAQs
"ttyUSB", // for USB frobs
"rfcomm", // bluetooth serial device
"ttyircomm", // linux IrCommdevices (IrDA serial emu)
"ttyACM",// linux CDC ACM devices <------------------
};

compile it up and copy the 3 files into your reprap directory

Just to make it clear the problem is in the particular RXTXcomm.jar that's distributed with reprap host -

Because it comes with it (or rather it lives in the same directory) it tends to override anything you might have installed, or might install to fix the problem - in particular it's why some people can talk to RAMPS with the arduino environment but not with reprap host.

Thanks I always thought you should be wary of the Taniwha!

Ubuntu 10.10 32bit

Downloaded rxtx-2.1-7r2.zip

Added line to /src/RXTXCommDriver.java as advised file looked a little different.

Compiled then just moved the RXTXComm.jar to the reprap folder

and Success!!

Much appreciated thank you.

or you could do this:
su -
cd /dev
ln ttyACM0 ttyUSB0

.....

doesn't work if like me you also have 2 mendels, the other on ttyUSB0 .....

You can also use a Linux "udev" rule to alter the name that the LUFA TTY ACM devices come up as:

[noctis.de]

Which you could set up to always come up as /dev/ttyUSBn, or both /dev/ttyACMn and /dev/ttyACMn or even something entirely different. If you have more than one device, you can add seperate rules which match on the specific serial number of the device to always give it the same device name.

- Dean

As far as udev goes, I usually let the kernel pick a name, then get udev to create a symlink named 'arduino' or 'reprap' or something like that, as well as a second symlink named 'reprap-' in case of multiple things plugged in simultaneously

---

-----------------------------------------------
Wooden Mendel
Teacup Firmware

the problem is that the standard java support serial library only recognises a specific set of prefixes for serial devices - the default one currently being distributed with reprap host doesn't include some common ones like the one used by the arduino commonly used by RAMPs - if you do do as you suggest you'll need to add them to the table in the library and recompile it (easy to do, harder to know to do)

yet another reason to use pronterface instead

---

-----------------------------------------------
Wooden Mendel
Teacup Firmware