Other Firmware On Smoothieboard

Does anyone know if any other firmware, like the RepRap firmware used by the Duet, has been ported to the Smoothieboard? The more I use this board, the more I dislike the Smoothieware firmware on it.

What do you not like about Smoothieware ?

The fact the the firmware continues to allow movement in the direction of an end stop, even though the end stop is triggered. I busted an end stop because of that. Then when I decided to try and replace the end stop with a sensor that could be used for both and end stop and a probe, have been told it can't do that.

The SD card is mounted by default even though the documentation states all over the place about having to unmount the card to prevent problems. You have to replace the firmware. And even when you have the SD card mounted, the speed is painfully slow. And in regards to the probe use, there is this big red warning about the SD card and the probe.

I have to power cycle the printer repeatedly to get the LCD panel to come up correctly. Never had this problem when I used the panel on other controllers.

The temperature switch module only keys of the tool's letter, not the ID.

These have been some of the biggest issues I have had with it. The probe/end stop issue became the deal breaker with the firmware. I have no issues with the hardware itself. Just the firmware.

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ElmoC
The fact the the firmware continues to allow movement in the direction of an end stop, even though the end stop is triggered.

That is an option you must enable. Please see the endstop documentation, in particular the limit switches part.

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ElmoC
I busted an end stop because of that. Then when I decided to try and replace the end stop with a sensor that could be used for both and end stop and a probe, have been told it can't do that.

You actually can, how to do it exactly depends on your setup. Somebody probably told you you can't do something a specific way you were trying to do.
Generally if you have a probe for your Z endstop it means you want to do your XY homing with G28 ( G28 X0 Y0 ) and your Z homing with the probe ( G30 Z0, or G30 Z10 if your probe is 10mm higher than your hotend ).

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ElmoC
The SD card is mounted by default even though the documentation states all over the place about having to unmount the card to prevent problems.

That is a limitation of the MSD ( Mass Storage Device ) specification, not Smoothie. This MSD feature is one that exists only in Smoothie as far as I am aware, and that you can disable if you do not like it.
Even Android is moving away from MSD towards MTP ( which is much more complex to implement, but we hope to have it for Smoothie v2 ), so this is absolutely not Smoothie specific.

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ElmoC
You have to replace the firmware. And even when you have the SD card mounted, the speed is painfully slow.

That is a limitation of accessing the SD card over SPI, which most or all other electronics also have to deal with ( I heard somebody say Duet actually uses SPIO to access the SD card, which would be nice if it is true, maybe dc42 can comment on this ). This will also be resolved in v2. In the meantime you get "Standard Reprap" speed, not "slow" speed.

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ElmoC
And in regards to the probe use, there is this big red warning about the SD card and the probe.

Yes, you generally do not want Smoothie writing on the SD card unless the PC can not access the SD card. Again, a limitation of the MSD specification, not Smoothie.

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ElmoC
I have to power cycle the printer repeatedly to get the LCD panel to come up correctly. Never had this problem when I used the panel on other controllers.

While I do not remember off-hand, I know there is an easy fix to this. Maybe do a search in the forums for it.

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ElmoC
The temperature switch module only keys of the tool's letter, not the ID.

I'm not sure I understand.

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ElmoC
These have been some of the biggest issues I have had with it. The probe/end stop issue became the deal breaker with the firmware. I have no issues with the hardware itself. Just the firmware.

Sounds like lots of your problems can actually be resolved by proper configuration/use, don't hesitate to email me directly at wolf.arthur@gmail.com for help.

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arthurwolf

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ElmoC
I have to power cycle the printer repeatedly to get the LCD panel to come up correctly. Never had this problem when I used the panel on other controllers.

While I do not remember off-hand, I know there is an easy fix to this. Maybe do a search in the forums for it.

The only time that I've seen problems with a GLCD refusing to start up or displaying gibberish was when the 5V was too weak. If configured for on-board 5V power, did you use a 1.0A voltage regulator or only the 0.5A one?????

I am using the 1A regulator on the board. I had power issues with the display to start with and finally solved it by removing the diode on the display shield and shorting out the pads. After that, it was getting the full 5 volts.

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vreihen

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arthurwolf

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ElmoC
I have to power cycle the printer repeatedly to get the LCD panel to come up correctly. Never had this problem when I used the panel on other controllers.

While I do not remember off-hand, I know there is an easy fix to this. Maybe do a search in the forums for it.

The only time that I've seen problems with a GLCD refusing to start up or displaying gibberish was when the 5V was too weak. If configured for on-board 5V power, did you use a 1.0A voltage regulator or only the 0.5A one?????

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arthurwolf
...( I heard somebody say Duet actually uses SPIO to access the SD card, which would be nice if it is true, maybe dc42 can comment on this.

The Duet uses the Atmel HSMCI interface. I don't know a lot about it, but according to the datasheet, "The High Speed Multimedia Card Interface (HSMCI) supports the MultiMedia Card (MMC) Specification V4.3, the SD Memory Card Specification V2.0, the SDIO V2.0 specification and CE-ATA V1.1.". The bus is 4 data bits plus 3 control lines wide, and the clock rate is up to 42MHz.

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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].

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dc42

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arthurwolf
...( I heard somebody say Duet actually uses SPIO to access the SD card, which would be nice if it is true, maybe dc42 can comment on this.

The Duet uses the Atmel HSMCI interface. I don't know a lot about it, but according to the datasheet, "The High Speed Multimedia Card Interface (HSMCI) supports the MultiMedia Card (MMC) Specification V4.3, the SD Memory Card Specification V2.0, the SDIO V2.0 specification and CE-ATA V1.1.". The bus is 4 data bits plus 3 control lines wide, and the clock rate is up to 42MHz.

Yeah then that's going to be faster than what everybody else ( including Smoothie ) does, which is to use SPI. It's a very nice improvement of the the reprap "standard".

We'll have that in Smoothie v2, hopefully it'll become more and more popular overall.

[Off topic] Talking of Smoothie 2, any chance you can increase the values of the pullup resistors on the endstop inputs? My IR Z probe board has resistors in series with the output, and this is fine with the pullup resistors on most boards, but the low value (1K) pullup on the Smoothie is too low for it. I don't want to use lower value output resistors, because they protect the board when the user plugs in the board the wrong way round, thereby putting 5V into the output pin. The effective output resistance of the sensor board is 1.64K.

I wouldn't be surprised if some opto endstops have problems with 1k pullup resistors too. They may not be designed to sink 5mA when active. It's the same with most Hall sensor chips that work down to 3.3V, they are typically rated a 1 or 2mA.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/10/2015 08:18AM by dc42.

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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].

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dc42
[Off topic] Talking of Smoothie 2, any chance you can increase the values of the pullup resistors on the endstop inputs? My IR Z probe board has resistors in series with the output, and this is fine with the pullup resistors on most boards, but the low value (1K) pullup on the Smoothie is too low for it. I don't want to use lower value output resistors, because they protect the board when the user plugs in the board the wrong way round, thereby putting 5V into the output pin. The effective output resistance of the sensor board is 1.64K.

I wouldn't be surprised if some opto endstops have problems with 1k pullup resistors too. They may not be designed to sink 5mA when active. It's the same with most Hall sensor chips that work down to 3.3V.

I don't have the specs in mind, but I'll forward this to Mark who is doing the design.

And back to the original question which is interesting.

Could David's duet version of the Reprap firmware be ported across to the smoothie board? Having both boards Smoothieware is slow clunky and shadows in significance compare to the duet version which is helped greatly by having a web interface that make the one Smoothieware uses feel like you are back on a ramps board.

While I admit adding a raspberry pi and Octoprint helps the situation, it's an extra piece of hardware and expense that shouldn't really be needed in its standalone format with no Octoprint places duet and its firmware directly in front of the Smoothie board.

Not flaming its just how it works out for me having used both. Now if the Smoothie ran the Reprap firmware and web interface, then you would have a much more marketable piece of hardware

You can get a better web interface for Smoothie : [smoothieware.org]

What else do you feel is clunky about your Smoothie experience ?

Is the web interface still the ponterface look alike or has it been improved to something more useful?

There are several options, including one that looks somewhat like RRF's

We tried porting RRF's interface over to Smoothie but there was so much that was specific to RRF that that was never finished.

We are working on several web interface projects that would be much better than anything around at this point, but those are huge projects that are still going to take time. Several OSHW companies are involved in contributing to that work, it's really going to be spectacular.
In the meantime the interfaces you can install to your SD card using the link above are a nice step up from the current "basic" interface ( which was never intended as anything but an example for the community to improve on )

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arthurwolf

We are working on several web interface projects that would be much better than anything around at this point, but those are huge projects that are still going to take time. Several OSHW companies are involved in contributing to that work, it's really going to be spectacular.
In the meantime the interfaces you can install to your SD card using the link above are a nice step up from the current "basic" interface ( which was never intended as anything but an example for the community to improve on )

Sadly that's just words and can be considered vaporware.

And I'm sorry to say this but i do notice that where Smoothie is concerned it's always if and but's and the key words with Smoothie are "in the future" and about how huge a project it is.

Tomorrow never really comes and that's what will leave the Smoothie where it is, always the bridesmaid and never the bride when it has the potential to be so much more.

Consumers will only wait for the solution for so long before looking at other avenues.

As for clunky. It's everything. Trying to do anything is a chore in the same way as its a pain in the ass changing things in marlin via arduino

Playing with simple stuff that you never give a second thought doing using a duet and it's web interface brings a sigh of frustration when having to do the same with a Smoothie.

Using the software in the link posted is akin to watching someone wheelchair bound attempting to climb mount everest.

This is the reason my Smoothie board is sitting on the shelf collecting dust instead of in one my printers.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2016 03:16PM by Calvinx66.

Has soft end stops been implemented yet?

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Calvinx66
Sadly that's just words and can be considered vaporware.

Actually no, it's already a lot of code ( which you can see on github ), a basic interface already implement, quite a few contributors, and several companies in the OSHW world commiting to pay for work on this over a full year

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Calvinx66
And I'm sorry to say this but i do notice that where Smoothie is concerned it's always if and but's and the key words with Smoothie are "in the future" and about how huge a project it is.

Well, yes, the Smoothie project has a good track record of doing a lot of "new" things, and all of those were "in the future" until they weren't.

As I mentioned before, we already have usable improved versions of the current interface ( see link posted before ), I'm only mentioning the fabrica project to say we are working on something even better than that, but there are better things usable *today*, just not as great as what we have planned.

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Calvinx66
Tomorrow never really comes

Well that's just not true ...
Not only, again, do we have a great track record of making tomorrow come, but there is a lot of ways you could look at the way things progress if you were really interested.

We *are* bad at showing people progress ( would rather do things than talk about them ), so I could understand you'd have a mistaken impression of stagnation, but if there is any subject you think Smoothie is not making progress on, just tell me and I'll point you at information that will change your mind.

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Calvinx66
As for clunky. It's everything. Trying to do anything is a chore in the same way as its a pain in the ass changing things in marlin via arduino

Well there are *a lot* of people who would disagree with you on that. I get spontaneous messages daily from people grateful this things are the opposite of what you are saying ...

But I guess in some ways it's subjective ?

I really don't see what you mean though, would you have any specifics ?

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Calvinx66
Playing with simple stuff that you never give a second thought doing using a duet and it's web interface brings a sigh of frustration when having to do the same with a Smoothie.

Specifics ?

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Calvinx66
Using the software in the link posted is akin to watching someone wheelchair bound attempting to climb mount everest.

I'm not sure what you mean. Have you tried it ? What is wrong with it ? Are you sure it was correctly installed ?

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ElmoC
Has soft end stops been implemented yet?

It is being worked on. It is the only major feature we are still missing.

The main reason is because Smoothie implements so much others do not, this causes obstacles and questions other systems do not have to face.
The short story is : we could do it wrong now, but we want to take the time to do it right.

We hope to get it in with v2.

If you are curious why it's taking so long, you can take a look at : [docs.google.com]#

The implied answer to the original question appears to be a NO. With that, we should then shop for the best firmware/hardware combination for our needs and not expect to be able to jump around different FW's without planning ahead.

Having run Repetier, Marlin/Marlin-2.0, and SmoothieWare on the same Delta, I was hoping to give RRF a try. Looks like I'll have to do some extra work to get that in the comparison list.