Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

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Lateralg
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Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Lateralg » Sat Jan 24, 2015 11:22 pm

I have 24V M2 (Rambo 1.2g) with corrupt configuration.h. I also have a poorly organized file system. It has stuff left over from my Mandel Prusa.

I want to make a clean start, having the best available of only what I need, all in one tidy place. Once there, I'm capable of properly configuring and downloading my firmware. Specific issues:
1) Best version of Marlin & where/how do I get it? (I need step-by-step instructions when in Github)
1A) Is there something better than Marlin?
2) Where in my file structure do I place it?
3) Same issues with Arduino
4) What can I safely delete?

I use S3D. BTW: Where does S3D look for the configuration file(s)?
Gary
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jimc
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by jimc » Sat Jan 24, 2015 11:47 pm

gary, unless i am misunderstanding what you need...just download the firmware from the makergear wiki. its all set for your printer. if you have the arduino software already then just upload the firmware to your rambo board and your done.

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Tim
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Tim » Sun Jan 25, 2015 12:36 am

There are firmware programs better than Marlin, but as far as I know they are all either proprietary, or don't work with the RAMBo.

Lateralg
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Lateralg » Sun Jan 25, 2015 3:30 am

jimc wrote:gary, unless i am misunderstanding what you need...just download the firmware from the makergear wiki. its all set for your printer. if you have the arduino software already then just upload the firmware to your rambo board and your done.
Do you know if that will be the latest-greatest Marlin? Also, has Arduino improved in the last 2-3 years?

So once I install, tweak and upload the firmware to my RAMBo I can delete all other Marlin & Arduino instances on my PC ... correct?
Gary
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jimc
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by jimc » Sun Jan 25, 2015 3:56 am

no real reason to keep other marlin versions laying around on your pc. delete them if you want. you only need the one you are using. there may be newer versions of marlin out there with different additions to it. i think there is one with bed leveling for instance but we dont need that. the one on the makergear wiki is all that you need really. there are a few specific changes made to it for the m2 which i dont think are in other versions of marlin. i could be wrong though. so far there has been no real need for me to alter the firmware other than the thermistor type for my e3d and default acceleration settings. as for the controller board thats a big no.

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Tim
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Tim » Sun Jan 25, 2015 5:08 am

I haven't seen any fundamental changes to the Marlin code. Marlin supports numerous Arduino-based boards, and the RAMBo is only one of them. A lot of recent additions to Marlin is just for support of different boards. And I've looked at the code pretty closely, and have not been able to find anything M2-specific other than basic parameters, mainly the type of thermistor and the rate coefficients for each motor. I agree with Jim; the Marlin version that's on the MakerGear wiki site is as good as you're going to get, for now, at least.

Lateralg
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Lateralg » Sun Jan 25, 2015 4:37 pm

Is there a way to see if a newer version on Marlin supports M208: "Set Axis Max Travel" ? I'm unable to do this when using S3D, and there are times when ability to make these settings is valuable.

Other valuable capabilities would be defeating Z homing in S3D bed leveling wizard. Or, to have it occur after I send X to X215.

Can we now write S3D macros that allow comments?

Am I proving the adage that: "If you help a friend in need, you can count on him to find you the next time he's in need."?

Thanks Tim & Jim for your help & patience.
Gary
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jsc
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by jsc » Sun Jan 25, 2015 5:05 pm

There are some non-MakerGear Marlin versions linked to from the M2 Tips post. About a year ago, I went carefully through the then current stock Marlin distribution and transferred all the M2 specific settings I could find. I also disabled M108 (turn off extruder fan) and enabled the auto temperature extruder fan. Then cmenard took it and made a few other changes to support the Viki, and a few other things.

At that time, the commits to the main Marlin tree were few and far between, but it looks like activity has started up again, mostly based around bug fixing and supporting hardware features.

I can't use the stock Marlin myself until I backport the dual extruder version.

Here's the Gcode list from the latest version. It looks like they do support M208, but it doesn't do what you think it does:
https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marli ... /GCodes.md

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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by Dale Reed » Sun Jan 25, 2015 11:40 pm

I'll take an action item here as well. When I upgraded to 24V I changed my V3 hot end to a V3B, and at that time I also worked out the change for the bed fan to change the PWM frequency. Default is something like 31.5 kHz, and many of these little 50 mm fans don't like that -- it messes up the electronic communtation on some brands. You can change the PWM frequency to 400 Hz, which you would think would be a problem, being in the audible range, but in fact you don't really hear it and the speed control of most fans is MUCH better. Instead of running the fan speed slider in S3D up in the 90+% range, you can slide it down to about 30% (or less) and get a noticeable speed change.

I'll find out where that is in the firmware config files and post the change.

I'm just not at my PC with the files on it at the moment...
Dale

jsc
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Re: Where to get & where to place best Arduino & Marlin

Post by jsc » Mon Jan 26, 2015 5:05 am

CMenard's exp branch says it has software PWM control, so if that's important to you you might want to try that. It looks like he's also pulled in all the very latest Marlin updates into that branch.

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