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TeaCup Firmware

Discussion in 'Mods and Upgrades' started by Sean Carson, Jun 1, 2017.

  1. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    There is a GUI for configuring teacup. It's meant to be able to flash the board so any changes you make are simpler than using the arduino IDE. In some ways it is, even with the broken upload function. But it seems to expect certain values and nothing else. Strange configurations, like what I have, may not be compatible.

    I'm trying to be fair to it, since I've certainly done a lot of hacking around with marlin too.
     
  2. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    There is another firmware you can configure and build online called aprinter. No support for my PT100 though, so I cannot test it.

    http://www.aprinter.eu
     
  3. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    UPDATE: I have teacup mostly working. There are only 3 remaining issues.
    - Simplify3D doesn't understand the thermistor values being returned to it, instead showing 0 degrees. The terminal shows the bed thermistor works properly.
    -That PT100 support? Yea, it's bullshit. There is a setting for it, but there's also a gap in the code that says it's TODO. so...yea. Most people wont mind this.
    -I cannot figure out how to make the device listen to the UART pins on the ramps board instead of the USB connector. Most people wont mind this.
     
  4. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    So I posted an issue on github about the lack of PT100 support last night. We'll see if anybody responds. It looks like they started to add it in but just never got around to finishing it.

    In other news, I received an email back from the aprinter.eu firmware team/person/code gnome. PT100 support isn't in there but apparently it's not going to be hard to add in, so they should have something up there in a week!

    Teacup uses a special config tool (and at this point, some manual editing) to change settings, build and upload to the arduino. The nice thing about aprinter is that all the config is done on a web page. You make your profile, and can start with one of several examples, and the website builds the firmware for you. No need to dig around the arduino IDE. It's very clever. I fully expect the marlin team to copy it at some point.

    Depending on how that turns out, I'll start another thread on aprinter firmware.
     
  5. WheresWaldo

    WheresWaldo Volunteer ( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)
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    Anything that provides us with options is a good thing. I have done the very same with my LCD printer. It came with Sprinter, someone modified Repetier and I modified it further, then I found a version of Marlin that only needed some configuration tweaks to make it work. That is why I was interested in your working with Teacup, so that I might add to the LCD printer library of firmware(s).
     
  6. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    They have some limited LCD support but the project doesn't seem focused on features. Instead, they focus on getting it running well on the most anemic of equipment. Considering we are on 16mhz AVR chips, I can appreciate the priority. I'm amazed marlin has pushed that arduino this far.

    I don't understand C as well as Arduino-flavored C++. That was the last language I studied in high school aside from java, which I hated, so this is a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around.

    I found that loading the project folder into atom makes it a bit easier to follow the code. It's very well notated. I'm just confused by some of the code voodoo.

    Do we know any curious minds who understand C (and perhaps python) well enough to decipher some of this? To maybe join in development?
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Like Repetier firmware they do support other hardware :)

    I get you point though, many of our Arduino based project jobs had to use a Due simply to take advantage of the higher clock speed. Costs more too...


    Yes, but not really going to be able to commit to another open-source project any time soon due to real job demands as well as other projects already committed to. Hopefully we have some others with more free time.
     
  8. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    Yes, and while there is some ARM support on many of these firmwares, there isn't a cheap drop in replacement for RAMPS. RAMPS will continue to be the go to as long as it's the cheapest.

    I tried creating an adaptor board for the teensy 3.5 to make it attach to a RAMPS board but I couldn't understand the optocouplers and while everything else worked, I couldn't turn off the heaters! I gave up and moved on.

    If you want, I still have that eagle file somewhere
     
  9. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    You nailed that. This is what makes moving to even the 3.3v Due a pain since you can't just drop a RAMPS on there. You either build your own stuff to adapt everything the RAMPS does or try to find and fork out the bucks for something like the RAMPS-FD (or a similar board). It was easier in our cases to just custom build shields since we did not really need everything a RAMPS did (and were not dealing with printers, but other kinds of robots).
     
  10. Sean Carson

    Sean Carson Member

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    I taught myself how to use eagle, kind of. My adapter borders little more then make it fit. Still, if anyone wants to look at it and fix whatever I did wrong with the auto couples, I'll put it up here later today. I think it will be a good idea to move the teensy. There's already plenty of support out there for the old teensy 3. The 3.5 and 3.6 have almost enough pens to do everything the mega does. More importantly, it has enough pins to drive our Robo's
     

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