Drivers

It seems almost no one is interested in developing custom drivers for RepRaps, but I imagine there might be some advantages.

Has anyone gone this route? Any reason people are avoiding this route?

I imagine that for most of the community this is a "solved problem", but I could imagine the development of a custom driver as being interesting for its own sake.
Certainly a lot of people complain about the FTDI drivers.

I imagine that all a custom driver would have to pretty easy to build and offer some advantages for streamlining the install of new boards for new users.

Any advice, besides the obligatory "probably not worth it"?

the only things really to change in the driver is delay, and time out settings.

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solijohn
It seems almost no one is interested in developing custom drivers for RepRaps, but I imagine there might be some advantages.

Has anyone gone this route?

Yes. See G3D, see StepStick, see Sanguish.

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solijohn
Any reason people are avoiding this route?

Plunk down $10 and being done is much easier and works well enough.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

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Traumflug
Plunk down $10 and being done is much easier and works well enough.

I was under the impression that he was referring to software drivers for Windows variants, not physical hardware.

Besides overlooking the labor of developing printer drivers for every operating system and getting them certified in some cases before they will install and offloading some of the processing to the host PC, I do not think that this is worth the effort because the current 2D paper printer interfaces in most operating systems/applications isn't suitable for 3D jobs IMO. I *do* however think that adding support for a USB 3D printer device type would be a worthwhile endeavor, as the current serial TTY interface emulation (using FTDI chips) is archaic and slow. This would obviously require drivers in every OS, unless someone could find a way to tap an existing USB protocol to control the printer.....

Ah, software drivers. Thanks for the hint

Well, there isn't much to develop, as RepRap hosts communicate with the printer directly.

That aside, before you can consider going this route to print directly from other applications, you have to make printing a one-click experience. You have zero manual control over the process when data is just sent down the line, after all. I don't think RepRap is there, yet, and not many people work on this. No manual tweaking, no fun. Or similar.

I think it's similar to this "just print" button some word processors offer: rarely used, because you almost always want some manual control.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY