Makerwarwe not connecting reliably

[jdg56]

Hi all,

I've done some searches and am not finding anything to help me with this question:

Makerware works with my PowerSpec/FlashForge printer. Most of the time, though it's getting worse and worse at connecting reliably.

I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 and connecting through an onboard USB 2.0 port with a known good cable. Sometimes the connection will work right away, sometimes it will work for a print or two and then start to fail, sometimes I have to do a Morris Dance and sacrifice a chicken just to get it to talk.

When I power up the printer an then start Makerware, it connects to the printer with the name "eeprom-err", but it does connect. When I try to print, it seems more and more often that the print fails, though the initial gcode seems to hit the printer (it warms up, homes and then does its waiting location set, and sometimes even drops the extruder-clearing line of plastic across the front of the bed). It will position the extruder, and then just stop. Once or twice is has gone irrational and done some nasty little jig with the x and y steppers, and I have to shut it off quickly to stop that.

I try to recycle the printer power on, try to restart the printer service, try to stop the printer service and then restart the printer service, and sometimes it seems to start working again. Sometimes, I have to power cycle my computer, which is v annoying as I'm running linux and I hate to reboot unnecessarily.

It tells me to look in the desktop logs. I export the logs, and find this:

***

obj/src/main/cpp/asynchronous_method.cpp:33: info
virtual void conveyor::AsynchronousMethodPrivate::response(cons t Json::Value&)
Sat Aug 30 19:07:01 2014
get_log_path response: "/var/log/conveyor/conveyord.log"

obj/src/main/cpp/asynchronous_method.cpp:46: error
virtual void conveyor::AsynchronousMethodPrivate::response(cons t Json::Value&)
Sat Aug 30 19:07:01 2014
Error response from invocation of birdwingziplogs: {
"error" : {
"code" : -32000,
"data" : {
"args" : [ "'_S3gMachine' object has no attribute 'zip_logs'" ],
"name" : "AttributeError"
},
"message" : "uncaught exception"
},
"id" : 14,
"jsonrpc" : "2.0"
}

obj/src/util/export_log_flow.cpp:141: info
void ZipWriterThread::addFile(const QString&)
Sat Aug 30 19:07:01 2014
Queued /var/log/conveyor/conveyord.log for zipping

obj/src/util/export_log_flow.cpp:154: info
void ZipWriterThread::closeZip()
Sat Aug 30 19:07:01 2014
Closing ZipWriterThread

***

I'm figuring there must be something I can tweak in the Makerware configuration files to tell it that all is well when it apparently thinks my printer is an Evil Alien Overlord. I'm not finding any documentation on the configuration files that would help with this.

I much prefer Makerware to replicatorg, and I'm losing a lot of print time to these connection hassles.

Has anyone else experienced this? Has anyone found an answer?

Thanks for any information anyone might have.

Cheers,

John

[curious aardvark]

have you tried exporting to x3g file and just printing from the sd card ?
it eliminates any computer issues and is about as hassle free as anything else.
Plus the x3g files can be generated from any machine - no umbilical link to the printer needed.

And - just had a thought - you might be able to use these new wifi-sd cards for a wireless connection direct to the card.
Now I've thought of this I need to buy one and try it :-)
Would let me use the 2 multicore machines to do the openscad rendering and slicing and then just dump the x3g file on the card that's already in the printer.

I can't be the only one with 4 or 5 machines used on a regular basis. lol or am I ?

[jdg56]

I have printed from an SD card. For some reason my brain prefers to work from the MakerWare application.

The wifi SD card is an interesting concept. Best of both worlds.

I have about 6 computers that I use (well, 3 computer, 3 tablets). Plus, this box runs several virtual machines. I'm going to start playing with printing out of a VM (I need to tinker with serial port/usb port configurations). That would give me the flexibility of printing out of one VM whilst slicing on another to get ready for the next print, whilst running blender in the main computer.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Cheers,

John

[curious aardvark]

still easier to print with x3g from sd. Certainly for longer prints.

can't find any concrete info on the wireless sd cards. It looks like the toshiba flashair is the one least tied into mobile phone apps and easiest to access with a web browser. So I might buy one of those and see if it actually works outside of a camera - the toshiba one seems to be the most internet browser friendly.
But I can't find any reference to 2 way traffic, just being able to download pictures from the card - nothing about writing to it as well.

Might have to be a 'suck it and see' job.

Hell, at the end of the day it's only £20 :-)

***

Just ordered one - I'll let you know in a couple of days whether it works or not :-)

ps. I find if the computer isn't talking to the printer I just unplug the usb connection and plug it back in again.
But I suspect you've tried that :-)