Cheap Boosterpack for MSP430 for 3D Printing

Hello all,

We are trying to improve/bring back what TI started, [www.ti.com], by targeting a different market and promoting this community. We have created a kickstarter for a new boosterpack for the MSP4305529LP, which is pretty cheap microcontroller. The idea was to create a cost effective product that will be used for general 3D printering and more if you want to, since this is all open source. A kickstarter was just launched promoting the idea for 3D circuit printing, more information can be found here [www.kickstarter.com]

Thanks for the support

FYI I find you kickstarter somewhat lacking in explanations. For instance I fail to understand what will exactly be included in each contribution level rewards ?

Nice to see the TI MSP family becoming a possible solution to drive repraps

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Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

Hello DeuxVis,

I fixed it up a little bit to explain things better. As for the rewards,

$35 - You receive the boosterpack
$45 - You receive the boosterpack and the MSP430
$100 - You receive the whole kit

Thanks!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2015 03:42AM by dmk123.

So, just to be clear, what you're selling is more or less the equivalent of a RAMPS board that can drive 6 steppers, but for an MSP430 instead of Arduino.

What 3D printing software is available for the MSP430? Has Marlin or some other 3D printer firmware been ported to it?

What are the advantages of this over a $25 RAMPS+MEGA2560 combo?

Hello frankvdh,

Yes this design was inspired and based of the ramps board, the whole idea was to show the capability of the MSP430. The firmware for this is listed on the kickstarter, which is based of differnet versions of 3D printing firmware to work with Energia. If your talking about the RAMPS 1.4 board, the difference would be the additional driver and the functionality with the MSP430 for basically the same price. We wanted to built on the concept of creating 3D circuits with this device.

Thanks

I don't want to be negative, because I *am* looking for an alternative to RAMPS+Mega, and especially one with a 6th stepper, so this sounds good.

But from a brief readthrough, it seems that Energia is kindof the equivalent of Arduino, i.e. a platform (a mini-OS, if you like) for running device-specific firmware, rather than the firmware itself. Whilst at some point I would be interested in doing some low-level coding some time in the future, right now I'm looking for a plug-and-play solution. So, what I'm asking is...

1. Do you have (or are you going to produce) a .HEX (or whatever the Energia equivalent is) file for (e.g. Marlin) that can be installed onto the MSP430? Or something more-or-less equivalent (Teacup, RerapFirmware, Repetier)?
2. Or given that Energia is apparently a development of Arduino, can I just take all the Marlin source code, make the appropriate changes to Configuration.h, compile with Energia, and have it run on the MSP430?
3. Or can someone with appropriate programming skills and Marlin knowledge make some smallish changes to the Marlin source code to make it run on the MSP430?
4. Or is it a matter of writing a lot of low-level code (e.g. stepper motor drivers and temperature control) to make Marlin work?
5. Or would the entire 3D printer firmware need to be built from scratch?

Frank

Frank,

Yes both Energia and Arudino appear to be very similar, but the firmware written for this project only works on Energia.

There are many things the Arudino IDE, such as certain libraries, that is not available in Energia at the moment. The firmware written comes with the .INO file which is the main file and other familiar header files such as the configuration.h, pins.h, etc. This was based of the Sprinter firmware/Hydra - MMM for multi-extrusions and could be a plug in play solution if you want to develop, everything is open source.

We did look through the Marlin firmware and found many similarities/techniques used. Although uploading the Marlin firmware to the MSP430 wouldn't work since there are many libraries used through the firmware that isn't available as I mentioned before, it would be a matter of writing a lot of low level code to get it to function for what is available in Energia currently.

Personally I'm not a developer, I will try my best to answer your questions, but I would recommend you visiting [energia.nu] for more info.

Quote
frankvdh
[*] Or given that Energia is apparently a development of Arduino, can I just take all the Marlin source code, make the appropriate changes to Configuration.h, compile with Energia, and have it run on the MSP430?

It's a different CPU and much of a firmware deals directly with hardware. Like "Set bit 7 of byte at address 0x50004030 to turn PWM on".

That said, Teacup runs on several 8-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit platforms already, so it's as device independent as a firmware with direct hardware access can be. Even more so since the generic ARM port came along, which splitted device specific stuff out into separate files.

For "just recompile" you'd need an operating system which abstracts direct hardware access away. Much bigger binaries, slower operation.

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