Marlin or Smoothieware?

[Robert McGowan]

Hi All

I've pretty much gathered all the bits for my PnP machine

I've gone for pretty much the Anthony Webb design mechanically and used his BOM

I'm using Pete Betz Icepick head but I'm stuck waiting on him machining my plate kit before I can really proceed with it much further.

In the meantime I've decided to plough on with the electronics.

I tried and failed miserably to find a real smoothieboard in stock anywhere.

I ended up with A Bigtreetech SKR V1.3 and 5 x TMC5160 stepper drivers.

Is anybody else using this board? Most people are using it for 3D printers and almost exclusively use it with Marlin 2.0.

Has anybody here used it with smoothieware sucessfully or alternatively how easy is it to use Marlin with OpenPnP?

Cheers

Bob

[Bill Ruckman]

I found it to be no problem to use Marlin 2.0 with OpnePnP.  There is a good write-up on it here:

https://github.com/openpnp/openpnp/wiki/Marlin 

 

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[Arthur Wolf]

I expect Marlin should be fairly easy to setup, and there is likely good documentation on how to do it.

Smoothie is the "official" board for openpnp, but I'm not certain if that has a huge impact in terms of how things are documented or not. Marlin definitely can do the job.

One exception might be, if you are going to do a machine that is weird/out of the ordinary/has special features, Smoothie has been designed from the ground up to make this sort of stuff easier. Smoothie is also much better documented than anything around. So if you are going to innovate/do something special/weird/new, Smoothie is probably a better option.

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勇気とユーモア

[dc42]

That board runs RepRapFirmware too, see https://github.com/gloomyandy/RepRapFirmware.

[Marek T.]

Smoothie is much easier configurable with simple txt editor and has a lot of usable modules to arrange the control over the inputs and outputs.
Smoothie has nicely designed board and works more stable than Chinese clones - as Arthur says and probably is right. But Chinese new boards have also chance to be dedigned better and better, so hard to say how it is in these days.
Marlin configuration is more complicated, you need Platformio or Arduino software and compile the sketch with settings loaded to the ROM. It's not very complicated but requires minimal more efforts and skills.

Marlin is faster, Smoothie has slow STEPing limited to 100kHz only. But your machine is not looking like needing faster STEPS, it's rather not machine that will be very fast.

[Airhead Bit]

@Robert Nice looking wood floor!

I picked up a Smoothie a couple of years ago and twisted in the wind trying to decide what to build or just buy, ended up buying a small machine for my hobby use. I'm still looking at building a machine (have a lot of parts) that can do below 0402, small 50X50mm build area. I've been working with STK 1.4 boards and displays (3D printer issues) since they support TMC516x drivers (no jumpers) and the Smoothie doesn't, Smoothie 2.0, not sure where it will end up, the Kickstarter closed but the smoothieware site seems to be shutting down, there is, of course, Smoothieboard X5 on Ebay for ~$80 :)

Marlin or Smoothieware? Marlin is an ongoing active project with hundreds of contributors (623), Smoothieware V2 (23), V1 last update two years ago. Marlin has the code to support encoders and many features, a lot of those features PnP doesn't need. 

I've found using Visual Studio Code and PlatformIO painless, it has become my code editor of choice, it works with GOLANG, Python and many other languages but a biggie for me was support on Linux and Windows 10 x64  (NOT Raspberry PI 32 bit OS!).

Whatever you choose to use please find your machine a nice home someplace else then that beautiful wood floor!

[Arthur Wolf]

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 5:29 PM Airhead Bit <airhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

@Robert Nice looking wood floor!

I picked up a Smoothie a couple of years ago and twisted in the wind trying to decide what to build or just buy, ended up buying a small machine for my hobby use. I'm still looking at building a machine (have a lot of parts) that can do below 0402, small 50X50mm build area. I've been working with STK 1.4 boards and displays (3D printer issues) since they support TMC516x drivers (no jumpers) and the Smoothie doesn't, Smoothie 2.0, not sure where it will end up, the Kickstarter closed but the smoothieware site seems to be shutting down,

What are you talking about ???

there is, of course, Smoothieboard X5 on Ebay for ~$80 :)

Marlin or Smoothieware? Marlin is an ongoing active project with hundreds of contributors (623), Smoothieware V2 (23),

Ok, no, Marlin doesn't actually have 623 active contributors, and Smoothie doesn't only have 23. Smoothie is much more active than Marlin in terms of development and new features, but both projects work/are managed very differently.

Smoothie's codebase and documentations are much more extensive than Marlin's, have much better quality ( the devs of Marlin say this themselves ), and Smoothie has been more actively developped than Marlin pertty much from it's appearance to today.

V1 last update two years ago. Marlin has the code to support encoders and many features, a lot of those features PnP doesn't need. 

I've found using Visual Studio Code and PlatformIO painless, it has become my code editor of choice, it works with GOLANG, Python and many other languages but a biggie for me was support on Linux and Windows 10 x64  (NOT Raspberry PI 32 bit OS!).

Whatever you choose to use please find your machine a nice home someplace else then that beautiful wood floor!

On Friday, February 28, 2020 at 9:51:12 AM UTC-7, Robert McGowan wrote:

Hi All

I've pretty much gathered all the bits for my PnP machine

I've gone for pretty much the Anthony Webb design mechanically and used his BOM

I'm using Pete Betz Icepick head but I'm stuck waiting on him machining my plate kit before I can really proceed with it much further.

In the meantime I've decided to plough on with the electronics.

I tried and failed miserably to find a real smoothieboard in stock anywhere.

I ended up with A Bigtreetech SKR V1.3 and 5 x TMC5160 stepper drivers.

Is anybody else using this board? Most people are using it for 3D printers and almost exclusively use it with Marlin 2.0.

Has anybody here used it with smoothieware sucessfully or alternatively how easy is it to use Marlin with OpenPnP?

Cheers

Bob

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勇気とユーモア

[Robert McGowan]

Hi All

Thanks for the many helpful replies.

I think it’s likely that when I commission this machine this will be my main port of call for help and it seems smoothieware is probably what most folk use.

Fortunately my day job is being a software engineer doing c++ mainly. As a result I’m not expecting that side of it to be too difficult even if I need to hack the firmware in some way. I may be able to contribute to it in some way if required.

I’ll compare the schematics in due course but is the SKR 1.3 a smoothieboard Identical clone as such or is it just similar/same micro with different pinouts for everything? Can I take the standard smoothie firmware and config that pete betz has for the Icepick head and expect it to work right off the bat or do I need to combine petes firmware file with a Config specifically for the SKR 1.3? Aside from configuring all the step values etc for my specific setup?

Thanks for the compliments about the floor also 😀

Cheers
Robert

[Kevin Kirmse]

I am currently working with a SKR 1.1 board. The SKR 1.3 board should be the same.

The default smoothie firmware will run fine.

The pin assignments are different. You will have to change the config.txt to correct for this.

Make sure you go through ALL the pins in config.txt. 

Some of the pins in the default configuration are assigned to the stepper control pins.

When I first set my board up I had two pins assigned twice and this gave me a lot of problems.

[Airhead Bit]

 @Arthur, Looking at contributors on github is where those numbers come from, visit your site and the last time your page on V2 Pro was updated was 2 years ago, look at kickstart, nothing to buy and no links. The link to the forum ends at https://forum.makerforums.info/c/controllers/smoothie/ where I thought you had your own forum, that forum has 9 posts in the last 30 days, Marlin at Reprap https://reprap.org/forum/list.php?415,page=1 has 69 topics and hundreds of replies in the last 30 days.

The Smoothieboard X5 is/was a superior product compared to others at the time, TMC has changed that and no doubt V2 will be the next product to 'copy/clone' but when I visit a site and information hasn't been updated for two years? A few minutes spent on status updates would go a long way.

[ma...@makr.zone]

Hi Robert

I also recommend buying a Smoothieware based controller, for best community support. Either the original Smoothieboard or  - my personal recommendation - an Azteeg X5 GT 32bit Motion Controller with the Bigfoot BSD2660 - Based on TMC2660 stepper drivers:

https://www.panucatt.com/azteeg_X5_GT_reprap_3d_printer_controller_p/ax5gt.htm

Advantages: has an USB isolator (a MUST IMHO), a modular driver concept and (most importantly) SPI control of stepper drivers. It has many features and still very compact size.

If you don't buy the original Smoothieboard, I suggest giving a donation to Smoothieware (like I did) for continued firmware development.

There was a discussion in the group and some of my config was adapted by Steven Doyle, the conclusion of which is here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/openpnp/nPQ0-k0P6ec/DmUFxyjMFgAJ

You can backtrack that to find my config, if needed.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/openpnp/nPQ0-k0P6ec/HnMynH1tCAAJ

_Mark

P.S. I agree that the Smoothieware project is lacking badly in embracing the community. People trying to contribute are clearly not welcome (I have tried hard to contribute code multiple times, read the discussions to see how this always turns out). The documentation, while originally great, has clearly been neglected. The Wiki is read only so I can't even help there. Version 2 communication is badly out of date and/or out of sync it seems.

That's all bad, because it taints an otherwise excellent Open Source project. The code base is IMHO quite nice.

[Arthur Wolf]

It's unlikely you'd need to hack the firmware, but if you do, or find bugs, or have any ideas for improvements, Smoothie is open-source and contributions are extremely welcome ( we have fairly strong code quality standards for PRs, but with a bit of care anyone can get through those ).

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勇気とユーモア

[Arthur Wolf]

On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 4:55 AM Airhead Bit <airhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

 @Arthur, Looking at contributors on github is where those numbers come from, visit your site and the last time your page on V2 Pro was updated was 2 years ago,

 

v2 has had a half dozen people working full time on it for several years. There's no project in the open-source fabrication space that has every had this much into a single project/upgrade.

look at kickstart, nothing to buy and no links.

we don't sell until the kickstarter pledges are fullfilled, that's basic Kickstarter etiquette. We are a few months away from shipping, hopefully less.

The link to the forum ends at https://forum.makerforums.info/c/controllers/smoothie/ where I thought you had your own forum, that forum has 9 posts in the last 30 days, Marlin at Reprap https://reprap.org/forum/list.php?415,page=1 has 69 topics and hundreds of replies in the last 30 days.

Smoothie has close to a dozen ways of getting support, with IRC being extremely active. Marlin mostly has only that one forum.

People have many different tastes of how to get help, and Smoothie tries to make everybody happy. Social media is fairly active too. It's more dispersed, but there's definitely more of it going on overall.

I also spend hours every day answering direct email requests for assistance.

The Smoothieboard X5 is/was a superior product compared to others at the time, TMC has changed that and no doubt V2 will be the next product to 'copy/clone' but when I visit a site and information hasn't been updated for two years? A few minutes spent on status updates would go a long way.

The v2 specs have all the details, and are updated as the specs/project evolves. We post updates on the kickstarter for the backers. We are extremely busy with the work, there's never been a project this ambitious in this space. Our communication isn't perfect, but it'll definitely be made up by how much new features is being implemented in the end.

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[Hanski]

Hi, I'm Hanski from Finland.

I'm diving into OpenPNP world.

I just got my homemade machine (with Smoothieboard V1) setup ready and have managed to assemble a couple boards.

Quieter stepper drivers would be interesting. In my case it would mean replacing the controller board.

I guess 3D printer guys know a lot about the stepper driver noise subject.

Any links or alternatives to the mentioned TMC2660 perhaps?

-Hanski

[Airhead Bit]

Grab a SKR 1.4 ($17) and TMC5161 or TMC2660, I like the TMC516x since they have programmable current settings and can drive larger motors. While the drivers being on shields that plug into the main PCB are 'cludgie' they allow you to swamp technology easily - go from SPI to UART to DIR/STEP with jumpers, again, the TMC516x allow me to use any of the three communication methods and have encoder inputs. For cheap you can try this technology the spend the big bucks like the Azteeg X5 or Duet 3 Mainboard 6HC (built in TMC5160 and Cortex-M7 @700Hhz).

[Hanski]

Thanks Airhead Bit!

My homemade 3D printer (also recently finished project) uses Duet 2 Wifi board (with Trinamic drivers), so I've learned to appreciate quiet operation.

The selection of modern stepper drivers & controller boards is quite huge for a guy who is only familiar with STEP/DIR control signals. :) 

Now that I've got the PnP machine working with Smoothieboard I could be more confident in trying the proposed SKR 1.4 board with separate driver shields & jumpers.

I know it most probably would need some debugging time to make it work...

-Hanski

[dc42]

@Hanski, if you are already using Duet in your 3D printer, why not use a Duet in your Open PnP machine too? I'm fairly sure that the standard binary will work with OpenPnP (and that includes mid-position homing, if your PnP head needs it); but in the unlikely event that it doesn't, I will work with you to sort out any firmware issues that you come across. We may be able to let you have a Duet free of charge for this purpose, provided that you promise to share your configuration details and your experience of using the Duet with OpenPnP.

[Harjit Singh]

Hanski, I'd love to see pictures of your PnP machine.

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[Hanski]

Wow, what a generous offer of a free Duet board! Didn't see that coming. :)

I could open a new thread here for Duet board configuration. And I could post some pics of my machine there.

I couldn't find much info about Duet & OpenPnP.

My machine configuration is very basic. One head and one nozzle. So no need of center homing.

Using standard OpenPnP GcodeDriver and standard board firmware would sound to me a safest bet to make it work in future SW updates also.

-Could I use OpenPnP GcodeDriver with Duet board (with perhaps some changes to G and M commands)?

-Would the Duet board be controlled through USB connector (just like Smoothieboard)?

-And I guess standard Duet board firmware could be used with basic PnP machine setup?

-Hanski

[dc42]

On Monday, 2 March 2020 12:08:23 UTC, Hanski wrote:

Wow, what a generous offer of a free Duet board! Didn't see that coming. :)

I could open a new thread here for Duet board configuration. And I could post some pics of my machine there.

I couldn't find much info about Duet & OpenPnP.

My machine configuration is very basic. One head and one nozzle. So no need of center homing.

Using standard OpenPnP GcodeDriver and standard board firmware would sound to me a safest bet to make it work in future SW updates also.

-Could I use OpenPnP GcodeDriver with Duet board (with perhaps some changes to G and M commands)?

Yes, all the indications I have suggest that will work, using the standard ReprapFirmware build for Duet.

 

-Would the Duet board be controlled through USB connector (just like Smoothieboard)?

Yes. It would be possible to use HTTP instead of USB, but I can't see any advantage in doing that.

 

-And I guess standard Duet board firmware could be used with basic PnP machine setup?

 

Yes, also with more advanced PnP setups I think. The only requirement I have read about that is at all unusual is mid-position homing.

Send me a direct message if you would like to progress the option of a free Duet WiFi in exchange for helping us verify the viability of OpenPnP+Duet.

[Hanski]

Thanks DC42!

I'll send a message to you.

And I'll open a new thread here when I have some progress with the Duet board..

-Hanski

[Robert McGowan]

Hi All

I posted a few weeks ago about choosing marlin or smoothie.

I thought I'd settled on smoothieware and the bigtreetech SKR V1.3 and 5x TMC5160 drivers.

However...On closer inspection it appears that the SKR V1.3 has the SPI signals to the stepper drivers connected to GPIO pins and needs to use a software SPI driver rather than the dedicated SSP0/1 pins or even the dedicated SPI controller.

I can't see a software SPI implementation in smoothieware. Is that right?

Would explain why hardly anybody uses smoothieware with the SKR V1.x?

Bob

On Friday, 28 February 2020 16:51:12 UTC, Robert McGowan wrote:

[Sudesh .s]

are you guys know how to uploaded the smoothie ware code in BigTreeTech SKR_PRO V1.2