Installing Sailfish Firmware on FF Creator Dual Extruder

[Mjolinor]

The X3G thing is a drag, I am contemplating putting Marlin on mine.

[warkmal]

By the way, to upgrade sailfish you need a couple of other things after getting past the owned port bit. One is that you need a new version of RepG from the sailfish thing on thingiverse. As far as I know that's the only place to get it. Reason for that is that there were changes in the way the new firmware has to get fetched. RepG40r30: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32084/#files

Also, you run RepG to download the firmware and install it on the bot, but do *not* connect RepG. That is, boot it, but don't click the "connect" button. Or if you have, click the "disconnect" button. The reason for that is that RepG boots up another program (avrdude) to talk to the bot and update the firmware. And that thing can't have the port if RepG has it.

A lot of the big stuff in newer versions of SailFish is to support new bots or bot mods. But there are some things for r1d clones like ours: LCD Monitoring is better. It shows current and target temp in more places than it used to. Build stats computes an estimated time to print. Plus some bug fixes.

But mostly I'm staying current because eventually there's a couple of firmware changes I'd like to make and I figure when I get around to it, it'll be better to do it off the new stuff. I've got one of the flashforges with extra memory (2560) so there will be room.

Which reminds me of another thing, you want to make sure you get the version of SailFish for your FlashForge because it has a turbo heating bed and the firmware PWM's it to reduce the voltage, otherwise it pulls too many amps.

[curious aardvark]

The X3G thing is a drag, I am contemplating putting Marlin on mine.

how will that make a difference, thought it ws the mightyboard itself that determined how it handled gcode ?

[Mjolinor]

how will that make a difference, thought it ws the mightyboard itself that determined how it handled gcode ?

With Marlin on it will not need X3g it will be able to decode Gcodes. The problem with doing it is that Marlin does not support I2C potentiometers which you need for stepper motor current control (G130) and adding it is somewhat complicated.

[robosmith]

Does Sailfish work with Makerware generated files? Connect with Makerware Desktop?

[curious aardvark]

yes that's way round isn't a problem :-)

With Marlin on it will not need X3g it will be able to decode Gcodes. The problem with doing it is that Marlin does not support I2C potentiometers which you need for stepper motor current control (G130) and adding it is somewhat complicated.

why not simply change the board ?

[Mjolinor]

yes that's way round isn't a problem :-)

why not simply change the board ?

How would that solve the problem?

[curious aardvark]

well geoff changed out his mighty board for a ramps, I think. Which doesn't use 3xg files.
So that problem goes away.
I have no idea what different problems it would generate - but it does solve the x3g file issue :-)

Kind ofa microsoft apporach. solve one problem while creating many others at the same time :-) Being a linux user, you wouldn't think along these lines ;-)

[Sebastian Finke]

The X3G thing is a drag, I am contemplating putting Marlin on mine.

Didn't even know that was an option. If you go ahead with it it would be great if you could keep us updated on your progress.

[Mjolinor]

I like being able to control the stepper motor current. All ramps will do is have it on or off, a big loss in my opinion.