Have the ‘powers that be’ (Arthur, that’s probably you) considered a minimalist SmoothieBoard specifically for CNC router users? There are so many advantages of the SmoothieBoard over something like the TinyG, but there’s also a lot of extra tat hanging off it that we really have no need of.
I don’t need all the FET malarky and I don’t think the A4988 drivers are going to last long on my 4x8 machine, and I hate, with an abiding passion, crimped connectors.
So, I just spent half an hour getting all those pin-type connectors off my board to leave lots of room to solder in wires and while I was doing that, I was thinking of how easy my TinyG was to set up - just screw blocks.
What would be great would be a 4SE - no FETs, no packet of connectors, just screw blocks on the board - or those cool green plug things with screw terminals (like the power connectors) - they would be even better.
I know It’s Open Source and I could hack and bash my way through Eagle and make it so, but you are both more experienced and have all the contacts to make it happen.
That’s exactly what i thought when i had to decide what board version to buy!
I would really love to see a board version for large machines, meaning no A4988’s, no FET’s, no small connectors that require crimping wires, but all spare IO’s connected to screw terminals or plug connectors.
And what could maybe interesting for a lot of people: a connector to supply a voltage for inputs and outputs, 24VDC for example, and some circuitry that do the conversion to 3.3V. That would allow a lot of people to use standard industry sensors and actors.
But that’s just a nice to have
I would really like to do that myself, but unfortunately that would require a expensive eagle licence because the board is larger than the board size allowed by eagle light :-/
I have no experience with KiCAD so far (i tried it but missed a lot of parts), but I really like the use of open source software for these kind of projects!
Maybe i should give KiCAD another try
Have you imported the original smoothieboard in KiCAD and then modified it or is it a complete new design?
Well, KICAD has Push and Spring routing which is making him amazing !
Regarding the board, was something designed by myself in early years of Smoothie.
Basically it’s same MCU and I have added to it a parallel port “like” connector.
I had connected at some time a LCD display (I didn’t put there the LAN part).
If you are interested just tell me and I will publish it somewhere.
