Marlin 2.x help or other recommendations?

Hi guys,

I've just built a corexy machine from scratch and am in the process of doing the electronics.

I started off with an arduino mega and ramps board running marlin 1. And all went well for testing up until i tried to use the bi linear mesh bed levelling. I'm sure it's a case of the mega just not being powerful enough to do the corexy kinematics as well as the mesh bed compensation.
So I purchased a re-arm thinking it would be a plug n drop replacement, but i'm stumped on setting it up so far.

does anyone know of a tutorials/instructions anywhere I could follow to set it up? I cant seem to find any

I read that it doesnt work with the letter type displays (the non graphic ones). is this true or has the compatibility now been added?

Many thanks in advance

I doubt you want to hear what I am going to say but its just my opinion

I ran ramps for a while on my little cube, it burned up after a few months while running a tiny hotbed, its limited and a poor design.
I then replaced it with an MKS Gen 1.4 that I am running now with Marlin 1.18 this is a much better built Ramps equivalent design but has limits as well.
You just cant get alot out of these 8 bit setups.
I thought about the Re-Arm and other directions, but it all seemed like beating a dead horse praying it will turn into a more powerful build.
I am currently building a 300x300 HEVO and that's coreXY so I think I know what your running into....

If you want to stop messing around and just get what will really work do what I did..... I bought a Duet Wifi for the HEVO....
I will keep the MKS Gen with Marlin on my little printer.....

Now with all that said, you are already invested in the Re-Arm it seems so... Marlin 2.0 is not out of BETA yet, you will get help and the crew that put together marlin are REALLY helpful! Great peeps...
if you keep going this way prep for some headaches tho

Maybe consider smoothieware and as I understand the Re-Arm works well on that.....

Thanks for your advice, it's helped a tonne!

My original plan (naively) was to buy the mega/ramps/screen bundle cheap and set the whole thing up using that (incase I fried it) then switch the Mega over to the re-arm. Which was going well until the switch over lol

I obviously misunderstood their kick starter marketing for the re-arm when they said:
"It's a plug-in replacement for the Arduino Mega in your RAMPS setup for a quick and easy upgrade to 32-bit goodness"
I thought that would mean compatible software-wise aswell, but oh well lesson learned.

that duet wifi sounds like a good shout. It looks pretty nice, especially with the web interface etc.

I think my plans now going to be :
- Persevere with marlin 2.0 for now. Although I read somewhere that you cant use the usb-serial connection? so that might be a non starter since I have a non-graphical display which I'm sure also isnt supported yet
- Try out smoothieware on it and prey that I can still either use the usb-serial interface or my display
- If both of those fail, then I think a duet wifi might be on order.

the only critical feature I need is some form of mesh/grid bed levelling as although my bed is about as level as it could ever be, my carriage sags about 0.2-0.3mm in the middle will teach me to follow the golden rule about 8mm rods if I ever build another.
I plan to run the heated bed and hot-end through solid-state relays anyway to avoid pulling too much current through any boards (especially the ramps)

If any of my thinking above seems odd/wrong, please let me know!

Thanks

If you want to use the Atmega-2560 there is no reason not to use the Bugfix-v1.1.x branch. The feature set is identical with the Bugfix-v2.0.0 branch.

We are using Re-ARM boards with RAMPS boards as the 'Reference Platform' to bring up the Bugfix-v2.0.0 branch. Half of the people with 32-bit processors helping with the effort are using Re-ARM boards.

The USB-Serial does work. I know this for a fact because I use PronterFace with my Re-ARM board.

And... That Re-ARM board is plugged into a Folger Tech i3-2020 machine which has a 20x4 character display on it. It works just fine. (You need to break out 3 or 4 wires from the LCD Cable and plug them into the unused ethernet connector on the Re-ARM board.)

Quote
Roxy
If you want to use the Atmega-2560 there is no reason not to use the Bugfix-v1.1.x branch. The feature set is identical with the Bugfix-v2.0.0 branch.

I don't think the atmega2560 is powerful enough to handle the kinematics + mesh bed compensation calculations for my corexy. Its stuttering at anything more than a crawl

Sorry, when I stated I was going to persevere with the marlin 2.x, I meant on the re-arm.

The only instructions for getting Marlin on the re-arm I can find are these ones here which states you lose access to the serial?:


I dont suppose you could point me to some other instructions somewhere? I'm comfortable with the programming side of it, comfortable with the electronics. Just have no clue whatsoever about flashing the firmware etc All help is appreciated in that regard!

Actually... The CoreXY machines should not be much different than the normal Cartesian machines from a computational perspective.

Probably that quote is from this thread: [github.com] That is where we are tracking the bulk of the 32-bit issues.
That quote is from 6 months ago. If you start reading from that point in time, there will be updates to how to use the USB Serial as well as flashing images.
Some of the people have 3 different Serial ports going. They use the USB Serial to connect to a host program like PronterFace. And they use the different
hardware serial ports for debug and other things.