Hi everyone, I'm in the process of fabricating new electronics for my 3d printer combining the Arduino 2560 and ramps into one assembly. This means I'll be using 2 new microcontrollers which have never been programed. The Arduino 2560 uses 2 microcontrollers the ATmega 2560 and ATmega 16U. From what I can tell by looking at the schematic the 16U is just acting as a USB interface while the 2560 is running the main code. My question is, does the 16U require another firmware or is it just part of its bootloader code? Also, each micro has a 6 pin ISP header so are there two different bootloaders that I'll need for this assembly? At this point I'm kind of stuck since I don't want to have the boards made until I can figure this out. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks

Why are you wasting your time using an atmega2560, when a modern 32-bit ARM core processor costs only half as much, is 5x or more faster, has much more RAM, and has the USB interface built in?

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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].

One problem is that the software I have (marlin) is written for this particular device. Another problem is obtaining an ARM IDE. I have Keil Uvision 4 for the ARM core however it is a trial version and is seevrely limited. Would cost around $4000 to uncripple. Actually I would like to use Silabs mixed signal 8051 derivatives. I use them professionally in my designs for industrial applications. They're fast, cheap and loaded with features. But I do appreciate your response.

I was wondering how long it would take for dc42 to post... one hour!

But he is right actually. We are in August 2015, and at this point in time it makes little sense to develop yet another new 3D printer controller based on an AVR controller... unless there are specific reasons for doing so, such as backwards compatibility with some proprietary firmware that cannot be ported or something else of the kind.

In any case, the issue you are investigating is why the Arduino Mega 2560 uses two microcontrollers, and the answer is that the 16U is used strictly as a USB to serial converter, and most Arduino clones do without the 16U and use a cheaper USB to serial converter instead.

I would add that if you post in the Controllers section of this forum you would probably get better and more detailed answers...

Quote
ThomasN
One problem is that the software I have (marlin) is written for this particular device. Another problem is obtaining an ARM IDE. I have Keil Uvision 4 for the ARM core however it is a trial version and is seevrely limited. Would cost around $4000 to uncripple. Actually I would like to use Silabs mixed signal 8051 derivatives. I use them professionally in my designs for industrial applications. They're fast, cheap and loaded with features. But I do appreciate your response.

There is no need to pay for an IDE for building 3D printer software. If you develop under Windows, you can get the free Atmel Studio which handles all Atmel devices. Or you can use Eclipse and gcc under either Windows or Linux. Both Atmel Studio and Eclipse are decent IDEs.

Is there a particular reason yo want to use Marlin? It's no longer state-of-the art. For example, you need to rebuild it to change fairly simple configuration items; whereas more modern firmwares read a configuration file from the SD card at startup. You might be better looking at RepRapFirmware or Smoothieware as a basis for your system. But if you do insist on using Marlin, there is at least one 32-bit port of Marlin around.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2015 07:28PM 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].

Guys.. It is Firmware Attachment Disorder. We need to help him through the healing process

... Marlin4Due uses configs from the SD card too, when checked

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Viktor
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