C2 LCD Controller modification for the Beta/R1/R1+

I ran into a couple of minor issues that I want to verify are not hardware related.
Will test the volcano unit with the same setup tomorrow.

 

OK, on the R1+ clone (a beta with leadscrew upgrades) it hung (hard -- even the LCD was showing a controller/arduino crash) -- a memory error -- midway through a DePrime on a couple of attempts. To see if this was an actual Arduino issue or not we took the second LCD unit (same stuff on the Raspberry Pi side) and connected it through the R1 with the ED3D volcano and ran the deprime. No problems. Still needed to do the Z leveling wizard and the numbers it comes up with are silly, but in the end, it works. I do need to figure out which way tweaks that offset closer/further to the bed because it needs a tiny adjustment, but it is working fine.

I will replace the Arduino in the other Robo and try again. It could actually be a bum arduino in that unit and I have spares (Yay! Spares). One other thing I did differently was NOT loading the Marlin 1.10 branch on the Volcano machine so ... I will test and see which of those differences is causing the crash. It could be the Arduino board or something in the Marlin firmware. Updates to follow, but at least the whole thing does work correctly. It is not a system issue, but something funky on that one machine (and my money is on the Arduino itself -- it is likely an Original that came with that Beta).

 

Oh, one other point ... I did not notice on the other one because the "top" is never on that printer, but the Volcano machine does have the top installed and when it finishes the Z offset wizard it drives it up when finished to the extreme end of the Z. Not off the rods, but really a slight bit further than the machine allows with the "lid" on

 

You could adjust that in the octoprint settings or firmware maybe, I am sure they have the Robo setup with 254 mm as max Z, when in reality it is closer to 230 mm.

 

When I was experimenting on the other printer (that died) it appeared to be hardcoded into their LCD software. I (obviously) can't swear to that, but it seems like it is (this is just running the Z offset wizard from the LCD with no external software involved). When I did it on the first one originally I panicked when it started going up, up and away and killed it.

Next time I watched and it and hovered near the power switch and it stopped before getting high enough to come off the threaded rods.

So I forgot about it. On the one with the top installed though it gets high enough to be a problem. A minor one, but a problem. I suspect they have the max height of the C2 coded up in their software on the Pi (not a great move from a software perspective).

 

@mark tomlinson Try this, on the R1 connected RoboOS box go to /home/pi/oprint/lib/python2.7/site-packages/RoboLCD/lcd
there you will find a file called wizard.py and wizard.pyc. Delete wizard.pyc. Edit wizard.py and near the end of the file you should see something like this

Code:

    def _end_wizard(self, *args):
        roboprinter.printer_instance._printer.commands('G1 Z160 F1500')
        self.sm.go_back_to_main()

replace it with this code

Code:

    def _end_wizard(self, *args):
        roboprinter.printer_instance._printer.commands('G1 F1500')
        self.sm.go_back_to_main()

That should eliminate the upward movement after the wizard completes. Restart RoboOS. When OctoPrint reruns the RoboLCD plugin it will recompile the code and the wizard.pyc should be recreated.

 

Thanks! I will test that.
I just got the detail one printing again after swapping the Arduino board. We will see how that works.
I will edit this and try it on the other.

It is working so far:

A bit slow as this is a 0.25mm nozzle.

I really need to motivate and do the bed replacement on that thing

 

Cool, it totally finished and looks fine (just a DePrime).

Still I am calling this a win and completed. The conversion to use the RoboOS w/LCD on the R1/R1+ works

Got one Arduino Mega clone board to toss in the bin

 

its not totally garbage right? Machine functioned fine without the touch screen

 

Still ... Flakey ... Found a bad board in the other robo too. Jeebus. Don't touch these things when they are working

Sent from my BNTV450 using Tapatalk

 

I am going to see if I can rip out the network wizard since it is so limited and maybe Kaa too.

 

So yea, BAD RAMPS. In fact, two new ones came in and one of those was BAD. I will be sending it back for a refund/replace (Amazon Prime). How did I know it was bad? With it all plugged in the Arduino would start to overheat Found it by feelin' it. The Arduino boards are fine, shut them all down before damage.

So the old RAMPS board was bad (seriously AFU) and one of the new ones too.

 

Just a note: this is not a super-shocker given what the boards cost. I have run through about two dozen RAMPS and Arduino boards in the past year (not all for robos and not all for printers) and the rate of birth-defects on the Arduinos is fairly low (even on the cheap Chinese clone boards) but the other bits (like RAMPS boards or other shields) is non-trivial. I'd say 20-25% of those have been trash out of the box. Another good reason to use a reputable seller so you can get them replaced easy.

Pitched the old one and returned the new/bad one.

@WheresWaldo if you get a nicely tuned and trimmed version of the OctoPrint/RoboOS that would be killer. Frankly, the LCD upgrade even at the current cost of parts is a nice add-on.

 

I will see what I can work on in the next week or so.

 

I just noticed that BangGood has jacked the price on the LCD screen It went from $7 to $16 ...
Still cheaper than SunFounder or Amazon, but dang! they hiked the price a lot.

 

and as a followup after a pretty long time actually using these on my R1/R1+ machines, they are the Cat's Meow.
I love them. I have not directly hooked up a PC since we did this.

 

Got so used to the Pi camera on the C2 that I added one to each of the others as well. Just to keep them all consistent.
Not much effort there, plug it in, boot it and configure OctoPrint a little.

 

I cloned the C2 SD card, changed the machine name and booted it up
I cheated because I have a C2, but the R2 image would work as well with the larger LCD screen.
You can find copies of those listed on this board for download It is rather important to change the machine name, but not difficult.

https://www.dexterindustries.com/howto/change-the-hostname-of-your-pi/