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Touchscreen Controllers?

Discussion in 'General Questions' started by JustinRF, Feb 4, 2016.

  1. JustinRF

    JustinRF New Member

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    Hello!
    I was wondering if it is possible to get a touch controller installed onto the Robo. I know that you can buy a MatterControl Touch, however I do not want to spend $300. I like my standard RepRapGuru LCD controller but want something nice like the R2 is supposed to have, or like the Dremel Idea Builder. Googled and did not find much...
     
  2. KTMDirtFace

    KTMDirtFace Well-Known Member

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    Don't think there is any off the shelf.

    I have OctoPrint on a raspberry PI, and was thinking about making a custom touch web interface to run on a tablet. ( If there isn't one already )
     
  3. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    Yep there is an off the shelf touch screen, about $40 shipped from China. Ask @donhuevo about his, it was installed on his Robo.
    http://www.aliexpress.com/store/1047297
    [​IMG]
    This one is 2.8 inches they have a newer one that is 3.2 inches.
    20151002_154907.png
    I modified the firmware and created a new icon set for this controller,

    you can download the firmware from here:
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByUVV3BSj0O6cEIwOG1RU0RsVms/view?usp=sharing

    and the imageset I used for the icons from here (Photoshop PSD file):
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByUVV3BSj0O6STh1dTNOemhkNXM
     
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  4. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    Now if you are running OctoPi there are a three add-ons that I know about that add touch screens; there is OctoPiPanel, OctoPrint-TouchUI, and there is a real android app from bq (they are the one's funding Gina's development of OctoPrint) OctoPrint-AndroidApp.

    OctoPiPanel is ugly and very plain, TouchUI is prettier, both of these run on the raspberryPI touchscreen. the bq AndroidApp is supposed to be the Official android app but the one developer bq seems to have on this hasn't really done much with it and it doesn't work properly on high DPI Android devices.

    There may be more, but these are supposed to be actively developed.
     
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  5. JustinRF

    JustinRF New Member

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    Thanks, I will look into them. Haha, extruct. I may look into OctoPi/OctoPrint if it supports the Pi Zero. Whatevers cheaper
     
  6. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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  7. Scifideity

    Scifideity Member

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    Is this a complicated mod to do or is it similar to getting the Full Graphics LCD working? I'm loving my LCD but just stumbled across the touch screen when doing some searching around the web and it's piqued my curiosity :)
     
  8. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    Basically the same install as the full graphics controller. As I mentioned above @donhuevo added one to his Robo and said it works well.
     
  9. Scifideity

    Scifideity Member

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    Very cool, might give it a try once I track down a TFT28 :D
     
  10. Scifideity

    Scifideity Member

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    the TFT32 on the Aliexpress link you provided mentions it may not work on Ramps 1.4. Is that what the R1+ has in it?
     
  11. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    The 2.8 still works on RAMPS boards, don't know why they say the 3.2 doesn't

    The 2.8 says it requires 12v in to work on RAMPS. depending on how your RAMPS board is jumpered that is not 100% true as @donhuevo and I found out. Regardless, the 3.2 does not have a way to input external power so that is why they probably say it won't work with RAMPS 1.4.
     
    #11 WheresWaldo, Apr 7, 2016
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2016
  12. HelmutK

    HelmutK New Member

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    Just a quick mention that I just picked up the MatterControl Touch T10 10.6" stand alone 3D Printer controller. If you can handle the $329 cost, and like to use MatterControl, it is a nice option for controlling 3D printers. It has quite a few features and the latest level of MatterControl has many updates since the last version, including better support for Support options. It can use the built in 5mp camera to do remote print monitoring and supposedly can stop and start the prints remotely.
    I used to use Pronterface and Skeinforge on my Solidoodle and for me MatterControl has all the print options I need at this point. It supports many 3D printers with built in default profile settings for them. I plan to try to use it on my Solidoodle 2 printer.
    I have only used the Touch T10 for about 5 prints on my Robo R1+ so far and the only issue I have had is for a few prints, like the Robo The Robot one, I had to use MeshLab first to decimate the high polygon counts as it would crash MatterControl with the original STL file.
     
  13. Scifideity

    Scifideity Member

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    The T10 is basically just an Android tablet running their app right? It looks cool but is out of my discretionary budget right now. I'm loving my $16 Full Graphics LCD. Taking the next step with a $35 touch screen seemed like a less painful to the wallet approach :)
     
  14. HelmutK

    HelmutK New Member

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    Yes, it is a 10.1" touch screen Android 4.4.1, 2 GHz OctoCore, 1Gb RAM, 16GB storage, MicroSD, USB, HDMI, WiFi. They kept the battery in the T10, they removed it in the 7" Touch, and it has a 7200 mAh battery. Haven't tried a full print on battery power only yet. ;)
    Yeah, I do not have the time right now to add and setup a Pi/Octoprint update. Maybe long term goal.
    But I wanted to disconnect my PC from prints, did not want to do the SD shuffle, and still wanted full slicing and print control with remote monitoring, so for me the T10 is a great option.
    I do not think MatterHackers makes the MatterControl tablet version software available.
     
  15. Jerry RoBo 3D

    Jerry RoBo 3D Administrator
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    Thank you WheresWaldo! Can you please provide all the .bin files that you are using to make it easy to replace the existing onesl so we don't have to convert the PSD files to .bin files?

     
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  16. Jutte

    Jutte Member

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    I have the Matter Control T7 and it is severely limited. It can't render large or complicated files, I have to import the gcode to print them. I can export the gcode from Matter Control on my laptop, but I wish I had just spent the money on another laptop to keep in the printer room instead.
     
  17. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    @Jerry RoBo 3D Here is a version of the bin files I used, I am not currently using that touchscreen on my Robo.
     

    Attached Files:

  18. Jutte

    Jutte Member

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    Thanks. It's a bit beyond my skills to know what to do with the file. I believe the main problem is that the controller just has too little RAM for the job.
     
  19. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    @Jutte I am not a big fan of MatterControl's Touchscreen, It is basically an underpowered, overpriced Android tablet. There are much cheaper ways to get touch screen control of Robo's or most other 3D Printers. Since most computers are much more powerful, it is faster and easier to slice models with. Then upload to your touchscreen.

    We have already mentioned the MakerBase in this thread. The knocks on it are lack of customization and the fact that it is closed source. In order for me to get a few labels changed on screen I had to HEX edit the firmware file to change ASCII strings. MakerBase appears to have no interest in open-sourcing any of their code.

    Octoprint is more of a 3D printer manager, it attaches to a single 3D printer via USB. The issues with it are that you need more hardware to get it running and there is little development on touch interfaces. It wants you to really access it as a web based application. It is Open Source so it could easily be extended to provide a much more robust touch interface with some coding expertize. It might even be recompiled as an Android application or maybe even as a Windows UWP app (this would be so cool, you could run Octoprint directly from a Surface or an XBONE or some other IOT device that uses Windows 10 as a base).
     
  20. Jerry RoBo 3D

    Jerry RoBo 3D Administrator
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    Has anyone tried running Matter Control on a windows tablet? We run it on a few surfaces in the Robo3D workshop but we have never tried a windows tablet.

    @WheresWaldo thank you for the files. I'll try loading them up and let you know how it goes.
     

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