1 Topic by WWC

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Topic: Solidoodle Transparence

This is starting to get out of hand for wanting to use the on board SD card reader on the Solidoodle/Printrboard rev E board.
In not finding the schematics for this board that was build under Creative Commons 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I have contacted Edrick with Solidoodle for information about using the SD Card reader he pointed me to the Solidoodle forum and to Printrboard directly.

Wayne,

I have done some searching and this is all that I was able to find in regards to the firmware for the printrboard rev-e:

http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrboard

http://reprap.me/PrintrBoard/en

We do not have anything that is different than this for the board.

Let me know how it goes.

Regards,
Edrick

This is not good as the revision id D and there reference to E is not the same as Solidoodle.

I did find these 2 blogs about this problem where they talk about the Y end stop was sharing a processor pin causing problems. I thought this was the fix, but as it turns out the port settings in the code are different that Solidoodle uses. So i really need to see the schematic to track this down.

After a couple of emails i wrote this to Edrick:
Edrick

I would like to say something here without wrecking our lines of communication.
You have made changes to the Rev E board and i truly would like to get to the bottom of the SD card problem , for one reason among others is i want to use it.
Without knowing the changes made this could makes it almost impossible to track down the problems.
You have built it under CC 3.0. I have seen in the forums also that it looks like the files have not been released.
I would say you are setting yourself up for a big problem as this is not in the spirit of CC 3.0 nor within the legal bounds.
I hope this works out for you.

Regards,
Wayne

His reply:
Wayne,

I am not sure what the issue is. The SD card reader works but we have not written any firmware for it to be recognized by a computer.

I understand that you are very interested in using it but unfortunately if you would like to use this feature, you will have to write your own firmware in order to utilize the SD card.

I am not sure where legal implications are imposed here but I wish you the best of luck with editing the firmware. You can do so with the arduino IDE programming environment.

Regards,
Joel

My last email is:

The  problem is where Edrick suggested i look at the for info for the Rev E board does not match up with your current board. The porting is different. I needed to look at the schematic of your version of the board to confirm what pin is used to operate a particular device, stop switch ect.
It is impossible to write the firmware without knowing exactly where the pins go, again they are not the same as Printrboard d and e that i have found online.
So I am asking to see the schematic of Solidoodle's version of the  Printrboard. May i have this to further investigate the SD card reader issue?

For some reason it seams they do not want to share there files that they had gotten free, that a lot of other people have put time and work into.

This not an attack on Solidoodle. Not really sure why it has gotten to this point This all is really way to much for wanting to fix the SD card reader nonworking issue that that really should have been done at the factory.   

i am willing to give my time to try and fix this problem but seems i am not getting the same from the makers.

All i asked for is there schematic of there version of the Printrboard........built under CC 3.0.

I have not received another reply from Solidoodle as of yet

2 Reply by 2n2r5

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

http://www.solidoodle.com/solidoodle-mo … -firmware/

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3 Reply by WWC

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Does it show the schematic?

4 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Yup. Though downloading it would have told you that faster than replying to a forum post...?

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5 Reply by WWC

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

That is rev d

6 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Says rev E...?

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7 Reply by Hazer

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

It is the correct schematic. You should load it in EaglePCB.

Let me keep it short: They changed the USB port to bigger. They added two direct 12V pin headers for the fan and LEDs. They changed the power input to use DC jack for power supply.

Thats all.

They also did NOT change the port mappings. The creators of Marlin did that. Check the most recent revision. They messed up the fastio.h file for the printrboard, while leaving the SD2pinmap.h file with the old numbers. When Solidoodle added thier custom parts to Marlin, they carried this with them.

I have been working on gettin LCD and SD support working for 6 weeks now. I have the LCD working, but not the SD card. When I get more of an idea why, I plan to make a post explaining what I have discovered. But another thing: wuthout the LCD, you still need to use the PC to initaite a print, so SD support is useless without the LCD.

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8 Reply by lawsy

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

@WWC

That reply from Solidoodle is the typical BS that has made me lose complete faith in them.

You are working to their advantage to fix a problem, and make a reasonable request in the face of their dodgy antics.

They avoid the issue by having another person reply who doesn't answer your questions and skirts around the issue.

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9 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

WWC wrote:

This is starting to get out of hand for wanting to use the on board SD card reader on the Solidoodle/Printrboard rev E board.
In not finding the schematics for this board that was build under Creative Commons 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

I have contacted Edrick with Solidoodle for information about using the SD Card reader he pointed me to the Solidoodle forum and to Printrboard directly.

Wayne,

I have done some searching and this is all that I was able to find in regards to the firmware for the printrboard rev-e:

http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrboard

http://reprap.me/PrintrBoard/en

We do not have anything that is different than this for the board.

Let me know how it goes.

Regards,
Edrick

This is not good as the revision id D and there reference to E is not the same as Solidoodle.

I did find these 2 blogs about this problem where they talk about the Y end stop was sharing a processor pin causing problems. I thought this was the fix, but as it turns out the port settings in the code are different that Solidoodle uses. So i really need to see the schematic to track this down.

After a couple of emails i wrote this to Edrick:
Edrick

I would like to say something here without wrecking our lines of communication.
You have made changes to the Rev E board and i truly would like to get to the bottom of the SD card problem , for one reason among others is i want to use it.
Without knowing the changes made this could makes it almost impossible to track down the problems.
You have built it under CC 3.0. I have seen in the forums also that it looks like the files have not been released.
I would say you are setting yourself up for a big problem as this is not in the spirit of CC 3.0 nor within the legal bounds.
I hope this works out for you.

Regards,
Wayne

His reply:
Wayne,

I am not sure what the issue is. The SD card reader works but we have not written any firmware for it to be recognized by a computer.

I understand that you are very interested in using it but unfortunately if you would like to use this feature, you will have to write your own firmware in order to utilize the SD card.

I am not sure where legal implications are imposed here but I wish you the best of luck with editing the firmware. You can do so with the arduino IDE programming environment.

Regards,
Joel

My last email is:

The  problem is where Edrick suggested i look at the for info for the Rev E board does not match up with your current board. The porting is different. I needed to look at the schematic of your version of the board to confirm what pin is used to operate a particular device, stop switch ect.
It is impossible to write the firmware without knowing exactly where the pins go, again they are not the same as Printrboard d and e that i have found online.
So I am asking to see the schematic of Solidoodle's version of the  Printrboard. May i have this to further investigate the SD card reader issue?

For some reason it seams they do not want to share there files that they had gotten free, that a lot of other people have put time and work into.

This not an attack on Solidoodle. Not really sure why it has gotten to this point This all is really way to much for wanting to fix the SD card reader nonworking issue that that really should have been done at the factory.   

i am willing to give my time to try and fix this problem but seems i am not getting the same from the makers.

All i asked for is there schematic of there version of the Printrboard........built under CC 3.0.

I have not received another reply from Solidoodle as of yet

http://www.solidoodle.com/solidoodle-mo … -firmware/ Not sure why the support techs didn't provide this to you before. IIRC they were a bit confused by your inquiries. The way it was phrased to me by Joel was:

"Do you know how to make an LCD screen work for the Solidoodle?"

Which was the issue they were trying to respond to.

We train people to help with the most common problems with the printer. If you are trying to do something besides the standard use of the printer, the support guys will try their very best to help, but they aren't trained to help you mod out the firmware for the LCD screen.

As you may have guessed, LCD functionality is not one of our priorities at the moment. It's not something we can make happen instantly for you. We are grateful to anyone in the community who decides to mod the firmware to do this; LCDs are in fact cool.

How would you have liked them to respond to your initial inquiry?
What can we do for you in the future to make things more clear?
Would you like out of the box LCD support in the future?

It isn't our intention to obfuscate anything. Rather, we are simply inundated with contact requests on a daily basis. We try to answer all inquiries quickly and efficiently. For deeper information, it is often better to consult our wiki, the google groups site, or soliforum.

If you are ever confused by the answers support gives, you can e-mail me personally at [email protected]

Anything else we can do?

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

10 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

solidoodlesupport wrote:

How would you have liked them to respond to your initial inquiry?
What can we do for you in the future to make things more clear?

I think he made it pretty clear when he said:

So I am asking to see the schematic of Solidoodle's version of the  Printrboard. May i have this to further investigate the SD card reader issue?

What should have been done? The support tech should have escalated the ticket to the responsible engineer.

Oh right - you guys don't believe in support tickets, and your "engineer is too busy for inquiries"...

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11 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

elmoret wrote:
solidoodlesupport wrote:

How would you have liked them to respond to your initial inquiry?
What can we do for you in the future to make things more clear?

I think he made it pretty clear when he said:

So I am asking to see the schematic of Solidoodle's version of the  Printrboard. May i have this to further investigate the SD card reader issue?


What should have been done? The support tech should have escalated the ticket to the responsible engineer.

Oh right - you guys don't believe in support tickets, and your "engineer is too busy for inquiries"...


Whoah whoah. Let's calm down here.

What more is there to say that a support technician could not?
Let me be clear - if you ever feel you aren't getting good support from us, you can ask for a manager. However, we do not make our designers and engineers available to customers.

Let me be clear: Customer support has every open source document related to the printer. Ask them for it, and that should *always* give it to you. If they don't, contact a manager immediately.

If you feel that LCD screen support should be mandatory we can look into it. We get very few inquiries in this direction as it is.

I was more asking "If all things were equal, what would you have liked to have had happen?"
Of course he would like the designs with revisions, but besides that, was there anything else we could have done?

To be 100% crystal clear:

information we do provide:
-Any design documents for open source parts of the printer (which only includes the board itself, and the associated firmware.)
-information pertaining to repair, maintenance, and upgrading operations.
-information pertaining to Solidoodle customer policies
-contact info for Solidoodle LLC

Now Ian brought it to my attention that the SD2 and SD3 have their SD card readers disabled by default. Would it be preferable if we left the cards enabled by default in future versions of the firmware?

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

12 Reply by elmoret (edited by elmoret 2013-10-07 20:32:29)

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

WWC wrote:

So I am asking to see the schematic of Solidoodle's version of the  Printrboard. May i have this to further investigate the SD card reader issue?

WWC Asked SD support for the schematic.
SD support replied without addressing this request, which is odd since you say SD CS has ever open source document.

No one is demanding LCD or SD card support. You can sell your product as you like. What they do want is answers to questions that are covered by the Creative Commons licensing, and if a CS tech doesn't have that info, the ticket should be escalated, possibly to the responsible engineer. You shouldn't have to "ask for a manager".

That (tickets, auto escalation to engineers) is how every other business I've worked with operates.

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13 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

solidoodlesupport wrote:

Now Ian brought it to my attention that the SD2 and SD3 have their SD card readers disabled by default. Would it be preferable if we left the cards enabled by default in future versions of the firmware?

Why does a user have to bring it to your attention that a portion of your product is disabled by default? That's the type of thing that frustrates SD users.

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14 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

elmoret wrote:
solidoodlesupport wrote:

Now Ian brought it to my attention that the SD2 and SD3 have their SD card readers disabled by default. Would it be preferable if we left the cards enabled by default in future versions of the firmware?

Why does a user have to bring it to your attention that a portion of your product is disabled by default? That's the type of thing that frustrates SD users.

We've been pretty clear about not supporting the SD card.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

15 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

solidoodlesupport wrote:

We've been pretty clear about not supporting the SD card.

SD = Solidoodle.

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16 Reply by lawsy

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

solidoodlesupport wrote:

We've been pretty clear about not supporting the SD card.

Where?

On your blog and your announcement here I can find these and no mention:

http://www.solidoodle.com/2013/06/new-s … and-cover/

http://www.solidoodle.com/solidoodle-mo … -firmware/

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/2789/sol … therboard/

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17 Reply by RikyDrake

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

As an owner and user of an SD3 I would like to upgrade my machine to be able to run from an SD card and LCD screen.  I have been watching the forums for this subject and felt that it was appropriate to speak up and lend my support for this upgrade.

I need to run my printer remotely from my main computer, so i now use a second computer and a USB thumb drive to transfer Gcode files. 

Having the SD card option available would allow for much more portable printing when doing demonstrations for the public.

Thanks for a way cool product .  RikyD

18 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

lawsy wrote:
solidoodlesupport wrote:

We've been pretty clear about not supporting the SD card.

Where?

On your blog and your announcement here I can find these and no mention:

http://www.solidoodle.com/2013/06/new-s … and-cover/

http://www.solidoodle.com/solidoodle-mo … -firmware/

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/2789/sol … therboard/

"For the tinkerers wanting to do modifications, the new motherboard also has spots for expansion headers, SD card reading, and a g-code-controlled fan."

I.e we do not support it by default.  Notice that we do not sell LCD screens or SD cards in our store. Several other 3D printing companies who use marlin (who I wont mention) have disabled the SD card reader by default for reasons of reliability. Since we do not support the SD card, we cannot say whether or not it will work reliably. That makes us feel iffy about enabling it by default.

Just to be clear: We did not switch to the Solidoodle motherboard with SD card support in mind. It's just an added bonus.

configuration.h

//#define SDSUPPORT // Enable SD Card Support in Hardware Console

http://wiki.solidoodle.com/update-firmware

You should try uncommenting this and recompiling the firmware.

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,146740,146740
http://www.printrbottalk.com/forum/view … amp;t=1215

there is a decent bit of conversation on how to do it here. I'll try and bring an SD card in to the office tomorrow to confirm, but hypothetically it should just work. I can't say we'll have time to test the card's functionality in thorough and systematic way. I can't say that I will be able to work on an LCD screen at any time in the near future.

If it works ok out of the gate, we may consider enabling it by default in the future, but experiences we've seen in other parts of the 3D printing world make me feel that things may be a bit buggy to start with.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

19 Reply by pcm81

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

RikyDrake wrote:

As an owner and user of an SD3 I would like to upgrade my machine to be able to run from an SD card and LCD screen.  I have been watching the forums for this subject and felt that it was appropriate to speak up and lend my support for this upgrade.

I need to run my printer remotely from my main computer, so i now use a second computer and a USB thumb drive to transfer Gcode files. 

Having the SD card option available would allow for much more portable printing when doing demonstrations for the public.

Thanks for a way cool product .  RikyD

Just do what i did, and i am not the first one to do it:
buy raspberry pi version B and mount it on the back next to controller pcb
install rasbian linux on raspbery pi
Install/configure repetier server for linux

now you can upload gcode via network and have printer work without separate pc.

20 Reply by TahoeTim

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

+1 for pi

Hardware: SD3, Octoprint, Raspberry Pi
Software: Cura and ViaCad

21 Reply by RikyDrake

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Thanks for the suggestion of the Raspberry Pi.  It is now on order.  I'll be hunting for the suggested guidance soon.
form your brief notes, it looks like 'repeater server'  is installed on the Raspberry Pi.

22 Reply by wire10ga

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

+1 for install notes for Pi

SD2 - Glass Bed, Fans on PCB and Y motor, Custom enclosure
Slicer - Simplify3D

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23 Reply by solijohn

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

wire10ga wrote:

+1 for install notes for Pi

Would you guys be interested in a combo/Solidoodle+pi package?

We couldn't sell the pi's at the same price as some other retailers, but it might be a cool package for some folks.

Former Solidoodle employee, no longer associated with the company.

24 Reply by Hazer

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Someone should put together kits, with the software pre-installed. The Pi route would be so much better if it did not involve all of the pre-programming.

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25 Reply by elmoret

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Re: Solidoodle Transparence

Someone just needs to upload a disk image file - iso or dmg. DD it to your SD card, off you go. No need for selling anything.

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