Does the firmware use the PWM for driving the step signals,

Controllers Smoothie
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1

Does the firmware use the PWM for driving the step signals, or is it bit-banged. Are there any special pin requirements (ie what pins to use) for driving all of the stepper signals?

2

@Stephanie_A There is no special requirement, any GPIO will do.
We did use PWM-capable pins in case somebody wanted to do something with that, but nobody did.

3

Thanks Arthur, that’ll make things easier.
is there also LCD support? I might be able to add it to the board I’m designing.

4

@Stephanie_A There’s “panel” support : http://smoothieware.org/panel
No proper LCD driver, we use SPI to talk to most screens.

5

Thanks @Arthur_Wolf ​ what about the mosfets for the bed and hotend, do you use the pwm?

6

@Stephanie_A Nope. Hardware PWM is only used for spindle and laser control

7

NOTE there are some pins hardwired in the code that you should not use for anything else, otherwise you will need to maintain your own fork (which you may want to do anyway). Details are here (the hardcoded pins are listed at the bottom). http://smoothieware.org/lpc1769-pin-usage

8

I am not going to maintain my own fork. Hardcoded pins are bad, but looking at those most of them are hardware limitations, not software.
People are looking at smoothie now as an alternative to marlin, if the firmware can’t match the hardware specs, then it isn’t going to get picked up by anyone else. Notice the countless forks and hacks to marlin, I think you want to avoid that.