SD card reader (kinda port from Google groups)

It shouldn't be too much of a headache, as long as you can tie into the right pins...

Don't you need an lcd for the sd card feature to be useful though?

The other advantage of the other chip is the ability to add the panelolu control panel, as well as Bluetooth connection.

Overall a fairly inexpensive, but very cool set of add-on that I will almost certainly be adding.

Hey John, any chance the s2 could come shipped with  the pin headers already attached? I don't know how pre-built the boards are. It would be great if they came with the ATmega1284P already but given the cost increase, I totally understand why they don't, but having the pin headers for the connector in place already would be really handy

will be a great idea..

i bought an Arduino mega 2560 here for 17$
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/stor … duct=25085

and a Uno at the same place for 13$... (i think it's the best price we can foud at the moment)

ps : arf .. stupid "one link only" rule...

or adding something like this one ?

http://www.dealextreme.com/p/micro-sd-c … 706?item=2

If you had a seperate Arduino to control the printing, an LCD panel would be easy to mount and control. In fact, there are a number of boards available that already have up/down/left/right buttons along with an LCD already mounted. Frankly, this type of control would probably be best suited for a secondary controller so the current processor can handle what it does best, control printing. The Arduino can handle multiple boards stacked on one another so you could conceivably have the Arduino, Ethernet with SD card, and LCD board with push button controls all in one unit talking to the Print controller.

To just use the existing. Board, it would probably require solidoodle to make changes to their firmware. If a second processor were added, code could be developed in the open source arena. It is pretty apparent that solidoodle does not have the time to take on another project yet. Also, these processors have limited memory and adding too many features could make the firmware too large, requiring an additional processor any way. I would prefer to keep the solidoodle processor doing what it does best as well as keep my processor as factory as possible so future firmware upgrades are still possible.

I'm going to order some stuff and start some experimentation.

The communication is actually a simple serial based protocol, you could use the softseriallibrary to communicate with the solidoodle over the serial pins (Not the usb of course).

I saw those kits Ian, and am really interested in knowing how well they will work, definitely keep us informed! BTW, thanks for all of your great involvement in the Solidoodle community, Between your blog and all of your poss here and on google, you are rapidly becoming the go-to-guru of Solidoodle

So here's my question regarding this. If solidoodle is reverting back to sprinter firmware and this is used for marlin firmware,  if when I get my unit in 8-10+weeks would it be smart to perform this upgrade mainly on the basis of wanting marlin to begin with and also really liking the idea of sd card/ computer less printing?

Although it doesn't necessarily seem smart just to buy a unit to upgrade it, but I also feel the upgrades are worthy enough to make an exception. Hopefully by the time I get my unit someone has this detailed fairly well by then

Well I'm glad to hear that. My main point is anyone with the printer already would know better than me, but is it overall going to be better to have marlin>sprinter or vice versa. I come from a cnc machining background, I definitely understand the issues involved with only reading one line at a time, so in my eyes the switch to marlin seems almost crucial for print quality among other things. But I'm not anything more than a 3d printer noob at the moment.