Frustrated With Communication Issues

Controllers Smoothie
1

I’m getting very frustrated with communication issues on my 5X board. Right now, I’m trying to use Repetier as it’s a familiar interface for me. I’ve tried all manner of connections, and only one seems to work ok, but it’s not very practical. Here’s what I have tried so far:

  • 10ft USB cable (baud rate set to 250000)
  • 1ft USB cable (baud rate set to 250000)
  • Ethernet (through 802.11n wireless range extender, fixed IP, port 23)
  • Ethernet (dedicated gigabit switch from Smoothieboard to laptop, fixed IP, port 23)

The 1ft USB cable has been the only one that has worked fairly well, but it’s not very convenient. Every other option seems to have issues once the print starts. Over ethernet, the print stutters on anything that is not a straight line movement with ping-pong communication turned on. Without ping-pong, it doesn’t print at all (just moves up to the start position and stops). Over the 10ft USB cable, the print starts, but after the first few lines of code, it stalls and reports “XX command waiting” in Repetier. I can’t remember at this point whether I tried ping-pong over USB.

I’ve used two different machines to try to stream the g-code to the Smoothieboard with the same results. Both are running Windows 10 (this hasn’t been an issue with my Marlin/RAMPS1.4 printer). I’ve tried Repetier 1.6.1 and 1.6.3. Same results for both.

I have not tried printing directly from the SD card at this point, which is something I will most likely try tonight. It’s not something that I have used in the past so I haven’t explored that option yet.

Manual moves through Repetier all work fine and seem to respond fairly quickly.

I’m really frustrated with all of this right now to the point where I’m about to go back to a RAMPS setup and call it a day. I was excited to use the Smoothieboard for all the features and performance it claimed, but with these communication issues, my excitement is certainly tempered.

So, what are my options here? Would Pronterface or Simplify3D work any better? Am I relegated to printing from the SD card? Do I not have things configured correctly? Please help me out here.

Imported from wikidot

2

I seem to have found a suitable solution.

I picked up a better quality cable yesterday. By itself, that didn’t improve things. Turning on ping-pong mode made everything work. Not sure why I didn’t try that before. I got through printing a calibration cube last night without issue, so this solution is looking hopeful. The proof will be when I can get through a larger print (multiple hours) without issue.

Either way, I’d like to get a better handle on why communication with this board, be it USB serial or ethernet, is so flakey. My cheap as dirt Arduino based RAMPS boards have never had these kinds of issues.

3

Sorry for not answering earlier, yes it’s well known repetier requires activating that option in order to talk to Smoothie correctly. Other host software doesn’t have any problem, but repetier does quite a few weird things like that, which is why we don’t officially support it.