LOL. I love your enthusiasm. I am by no means an expert at this stuff though. I am relying on the community to check my work. I have already gotten a ton of help from dc42 through PMs on this as well as suggestions from others. I am also using other open source designs as reference for a number of things. For instance I am looking right now at the EINSY-RAMBO schematics to see how they are interfby CthulhuLabs - Developers
So I just ran into some snags on this design and am trying to figure out good solutions. First off the TMC2130 does not support SPI configurable current like I thought it did. This means I need to use PWMs to control them. At a minimum that means I need 3 pins for the PWMs. Second off the endstops and the diagnostic pins of the TMC2130 should be separate. So that means I need five digital inputs.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
With regards to the LCD I had been putting some thought into that as well. One of the cool things about the ESP32 is that the GPIO pins are not fixed in their functionality. They can be remapped to a large number of different on board peripherals including an I2C controller, a PWM controller, a SPI controller, and like 20 other things. I am actually thinking that the Z-Probe Pin and the two Servby CthulhuLabs - Developers
Hey all. Sorry I have not been active on this thread for a while. I have had quite a bit going on the last few months. I still have been researching and working on this. Glad to see someone else is also working on a similar design. During this time I have come to a few conclusions. 1. There is no good way of doing this with stepper driver daughter boards without compromising too much or usingby CthulhuLabs - Developers
How much RAM is required?by CthulhuLabs - Controllers
So Thomas Sanladerer made a tutorial on setting this up with RAMPS and Marlin on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPvTB3irCxQ). In it he has you wire the DIAG1 pin of the TMC2130 driver boards to the endstop pins of the RAMPS board. I am guessing that Marlin is setting this pin so that when the motor stalls this pin goes active which triggers the end stop. As for wiring the RADDS extensiby CthulhuLabs - Controllers
This is mainly aimed at dc42, but I think others might be interested in this too. I am planning on getting the TMC2130 stepper drivers and would like to setup stall detection and sensorless homing on my RADDS hardware. I know that the Duet hardware now supports these features in RRF 1.20 beta 5 and later. I also know they use the TMC2660 which is slightly different. I am wondering how hard it wouby CthulhuLabs - Controllers
I want to stick to SPI chips as it means only having to worry about pins for a single bus. Probably going to go with a general GPIO chip and a PWM chip with a high enough frequency. That is assuming the ADCs will work for the temperature readings.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
I forgot to include URT0 in my pin count thank you for pointing that out. At this point I am certain I am going to have to use an external GPIO chip. I am currently looking at the MCP23S17 as well as a few others.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
I am sorry, I misunderstood your question. Not enough caffeine for a Monday morning. Right now I am leaning towards PWM for the stepper Vrefs.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
Not sure. Their documentation is still a bit sparse. To put it into perspective googling "esp32 DAC Vref" has this thread as the 4th link right now.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
Well looks like I need to setup the ADCs on my dev board to test how noisy the various dB levels are.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
I am more worried about the noise they mention in the thread. Up to 5% apparently. That could be really bad for temperature readings.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
I am seriously considering a GPIO / ADC / DAC chip on the board. Just wanted trying to keep costs down and easy enough to construct by someone in their house if they wanted to.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
Quotenewbob ESP32 ADC has non-linear response and lookup tables have yet to be provided by espresiff. Well that could be a problem.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
@frankvdh - While I appreciate the ideas, this is supposed to be an entry level replacement for the RAMPS board. I am trying to include essential features and keep costs as minimal as possible. If this board turns out well I will look into creating more advanced boards including things like 5+ extruders. @dc42 - Ugg. So many things I forgot....by CthulhuLabs - Developers
So far this is what I have come up with for GPIO needs: X-Enable Y-Enable Z-Enable E1-Enable E2-Enable X-Step Y-Step Z-Step E1-Step E2-Step X-Dir Y-Dir Z-Dir E1-Dir E2-Dir X-Vref Y-Vref Z-Vref E1-Vref E2-Vref X-EndS Y-EndS Z-EndS H1-PWM H2-PWM HB-PWM T1-ADC T2-ADC TB-ADC SRV-PWM SPI-MISO SPI-MOSI SPI-SCK SPI-SS-SDcard SPI-SS-AUX SPI-SS-X SPI-SS-Y SPI-SS-Z SPI-SS-E1 SPI-SS-E2 That is 40 differeby CthulhuLabs - Developers
@chri - The board is just a concept at this point. I am currently finalizing what I think should be on the board. As for those SD5984 drivers, it is a good concept, but the position of those extra pins means that will restrict airflow under the board. Might not be a problem for this specific stepper board, but for stepper driver chips like the DRV8825 are designed to have thermal vias bring theby CthulhuLabs - Developers
My ESP32 dev board finally came so I am getting back to this. @Hubberthus - Pretty much figured it would run RepRapFirmware. Among other things it is the firmware I am familiar with on my existing RADDS board. Also dc42 is pretty much the maintainer of it, which is why I was happy to see him saying that the ESP32 should work. I do need to dig more into the HW acceleration capabilities of the ESPby CthulhuLabs - Developers
While I fully agree with your assessment of the pot adjustments, making the voltage adjustment software based requires the stepper drivers to be built into the board. This raises the cost of the board itself and reduces the molecularity of the design. As someone who has fried multiple stepper drivers when starting out, having the ability to change them out without replacing the whole board is a bby CthulhuLabs - Developers
Thanks dc42!!! I know your assessment is sound. Ultimately what I want to design is something to be a replacement for the RAMPS board. It would have five sockets for stepper motor drivers (X,Y,Z,E1,E2), three endstop pins (X,Y,Z), three mosfets for two hotends and a heated bed, a built in SD card slot, and a header for a dumb LCD (not like your super smart LCD). I like the low cost / minimal feby CthulhuLabs - Developers
I was wondering about the feasibility of using an ESP32 for running a 3D printer. It is 32bit, runs at up to 240Mhz, has 32 GPIO pins, and costs right around 4 USD for the chip itself. There are multiple companies selling development boards for it with all the necessary support circuits for right around 20 USD. My only concern is if the number and types of GPIO pins it has will be enough forby CthulhuLabs - Developers
So I have a RADDS board running dcnewman's port of dc42s RepRapFirmware. I was wondering what it would take to get this running on one of these: and interfacing with my RADDS board. They both have headers for SPI. The RADDS board is running 1.14 of RepRapFirmware.by CthulhuLabs - Developers
Quoteshofman QuoteAK_Eric I have that config right now (well Dan's RAADS port of the dc42 firmware) working successfully. You have to get a special cut of Octoprint for it to work with RRF though, and install a custom Octoprint plugin. I outline this here: Eric, do you know if Octoprint will upload config files in the future, like the Duet Web interface can do ? I was looking into this as welby CthulhuLabs - Controllers
GroupB - I keep seeing you reference DVR8825s. You do mean the DRV8825s right? I am planning on replacing mine eventually, but for now they're what I have. They have worked fairly well on my RAMPS setup. dc42 - Thanks was wondering how to configure these. Does having an increased pulse effect over all RRF performance in any way?by CthulhuLabs - Controllers
Just checking what the current state of RADDs + DRV8825s + RRF is right now? I see that GroupB was having some issues with it and was going to test 1.14 but hasn't given an update since.by CthulhuLabs - Controllers
I actually build a 48 node cluster of Rasberry Pis for testing network equipment. I think I actually used the exact same powersupply you did. The way I connected the power was to use electrical bus bars meant for a electrical panel to connect them similar to this one: I got two of them, one for the positive and one for the negative, which I mounted to the underside of my enclosure. I then ranby CthulhuLabs - General