Solved Cura Ubuntu 14.04

I am attempting to connect to a 3D+ via Cura 15.04 on Ubuntu 14.04. I have set the baud rate to 250000 and Cura sees /dev/ttyACM0. I am also trying to dry run the device just to make sure the G codes get there since it is new out of the box.

On the terminal that started Cura I see "listening for engine communications on 49674". When I click "print..." it pops open a window saying "Opening serial port", and then nothing happens (forever). "Connect", Print and "Cancel Print" are all greyed out.

How do I get to the "jog" command control? I read there is something called pronterface, but I can't find it. If I can get the computer to talk to the printer, I think I can begin to learn how to use the thing.

When I run "sudo cura" it comes back with "Closed" and the "Connect" button can be clicked. But this is an infinite loop and nothing happens.

Thanks for any ideas!
Dr. mike

 

I did not run across Creation Workshop before. I will give that a try!
Worst case, if I get something like minicom to make sure the port is actually working, what should I see when I first turn on the printer? Is there a command like "are you awake?" which will send some ASCII text back?

If I can deal with this at a high level it would be great, but if I have to write my own serial transmitter, I WILL make this work!
Thanks for the hints!

 

Thanks! At this point I can't afford Creation Workshop, but they have a 30 day trial which is something to think about. I think there is some low level com link problem, and once I get that straight Cura may be functional. Once I get things to actually work, I will post here what happened. I found clues on dialout and udev which might help.

Dr. mike

 

C'est la vie. If you do something well, might as well get paid for it.
But on to one of my previous questions about "what happens at start up?" Looking at the upgrade code for previous versions the following seems to be a startup transmission:

Code:

  SERIAL_PROTOCOLLNPGM("start");
  SERIAL_ECHO_START;

  // Check startup - does nothing if bootloader sets MCUSR to 0
  byte mcu = MCUSR;
  if(mcu & 1) SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(MSG_POWERUP);
  if(mcu & 2) SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(MSG_EXTERNAL_RESET);
  if(mcu & 4) SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(MSG_BROWNOUT_RESET);
  if(mcu & 8) SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(MSG_WATCHDOG_RESET);
  if(mcu & 32) SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(MSG_SOFTWARE_RESET);
  MCUSR=0;

  SERIAL_ECHOPGM(MSG_MARLIN);
  SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(VERSION_STRING);
  #ifdef STRING_VERSION_CONFIG_H
    #ifdef STRING_CONFIG_H_AUTHOR
      SERIAL_ECHO_START;
      SERIAL_ECHOPGM(MSG_CONFIGURATION_VER);
      SERIAL_ECHOPGM(STRING_VERSION_CONFIG_H);
      SERIAL_ECHOPGM(MSG_AUTHOR);
      SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(STRING_CONFIG_H_AUTHOR);
      SERIAL_ECHOPGM("Compiled: ");
      SERIAL_ECHOLNPGM(__DATE__);
    #endif
  #endif

So if I get the baud rate correct, I should see several lines of text spew from the printer. I suspect this is difficult to do through a USB-serial adapter. Has anyone seen these messages at printer startup?

 

Wow - it took a while but it now works! There are several problems.
On the Ubuntu side I had to do two things:
1) add my user to dialout:
sudo adduser <myname> dialout

and 2) create rules so ttyACM0 has the ability to run when accessed at user level (rather than just super user)
sudo emacs /etc/udev/rules.d/ttyACM.rules
and insert the text:
KERNEL=="ttyACM?",NAME="ROBO3D+",SYMLINK+="%k",MODE="0666"

Then on the Arduino I had to change the baud rate do 115200. This was suggested by ROBO support, and after asking a few questions I found out I had to do it from a windows machine since Ubuntu doesn't support the 250000 baud the Arduino natively runs at. So I downloaded the compiler from arduino.cc and the code from firmware on this site, changed the baud rate to 115200, recompiled and uploaded. Then I set the serial monitor tool to watch the Arduino, and I saw all the above text! I have a call into support to find out what I can send to verify it is talking back, but when I turned on Cura and plugged the Robo into my Ubuntu box, it started to print!

Next step is calibration - it definitely did not look right (I ran it with no material just to see it work).

So, Cura can talk to Robo3D+ under Ubuntu, but you have to use a windows machine to break the catch 22 on baud rate.

 

Brilliant, thanks!

I've been grinding my gears over this for the last couple of hours, and your suggestion did the trick.