SD extender cable

jckray

I know SD extender cables can cause issues. I' hoping to get a bit more information.

Are there some that work, but many that don't and it is easier to just caution against all?

Is there a specific one that people have consistently NOT had issues with?

Could a breakout outboard be used that connects to CONN_SD? If so, has anyone tried this?

jckray

@dc42 is there any reason something like this would not work? Thinking of connecting it to the micro sd slot on the paneldue.

Our enterprise clients have a hard time getting approval to add new devices to their network. The micro sd slot on the panel is hard to access and Standard SD would be much preferred over micro.

droftarts

@jckray This is the Duet3D advice, from https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/SD_Card

Caution! Do not use an SD extender cable. Such cables do not generally work well at the high SD card transfer speeds used by the Duet. Additionally, some types of SD card extender cable have been found to damage the SD card socket. Damage to the SD card socket from using an extender cable is not covered by the warranty.

This has been learnt the hard way, with damaged Duets. I don't have any information on which extender cables work okay, or if using one in the PanelDue will be any safer/more reliable.

I'd guess modifying an extender cable to connect to the CONN_SD directly would be another way do it. Use the Duet pin out diagram, and find the pin out of the SD card you want to use, and hack an extender cable.

You can move the PanelDue to the 4-wire header, which is more reliable over longer distance than the ribbon cable connection. You could always then use the ribbon cable and hack yourself an extender, like this one!

Ian

mrehorstdmd

The 4-wire interface on the Panel Due has nothing to do with the uSD card slot. If you want to use the uSD slot on the Panel Due you have to use the ribbon cable to connect it. You can't make long runs with those ribbon cables because they carry SPI signals and will lose sync over a relatively short cable run. In other words, a functioning uSD/SD card slot has to be within about 300 mm of the controller board.

droftarts

@mrehorstdmd I assumed that, as he mentioned he was considering connecting an extender to the SD slot on the PanelDue, and "The micro sd slot on the panel is hard to access", his PanelDue is plugged in using the ribbon cable. My suggestion was to move the PanelDue to the 4-wire interface. Yes, this means the PanelDue's on-board SD card can no longer be used. But leaves CONN-SD available to connect something else, and if you have a PanelDue connected with the 4-wire cable, you'll now have a spare ribbon cable that can connect to CONN-SD, which could be adapted.

@jckray If your clients are having problems connecting to their networks, how about connecting directly to the Duet? Then they get to use the Duet Web Control interface, and won't need to mess around with SD cards. The Duet 2 WiFi offers an "Access Point" mode that allows a direct WiFi connection to the Duet. See M589 and M552 in the Gcode dictionary. The Duet 2 Ethernet and Duet 2 Maestro can be configured to connect directly to an available ethernet port on your PC. See this thread on the forum for details. (I'm in the process of writing a guide for setting up the Duet these ways.)

Ian

jckray

@droftarts the buildings are often too large for the network generated by access point to reach everyone that needs to use the machine. Most of the people use desktops as well so they cannot bring their a computer in range.

I order one these to test. Hoping it will work better than the ribbon cable extenders.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B073XJPWDC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

dc42

I recommend Ian's suggestion: connect the PanelDue to the Duet using a 4-core cable, then connect a SD card socket to CONN_SD.

jckray

@dc42 @droftarts I will look into connecting an SD socket to CONN_SD as well. Thanks

chriscross

@jckray did you checked the SD socket to CONN_SD? Did it work?
what did you use? I have the same issue and will fix it in the same way but I don´t know which SD extender is the right one.