Add Kinetica G2 board support

LucTH

Hello @dc42 , hello community,

following PR process I am starting discussion about how to add a new board in the nice RepRap firmware
I am helping @royco to get support on his Kinetica G2C board

The board is based on Duet2 Maestro/Duet2 Wifi
4 drivers TMC2209
1 Heatbed/1 Hotend
2 Fan mosfets
3 thermistor inputs
Supports PanelDue/128x64 graphic LCD display
Supports WiFi (esp8266) or Ethernet modules, the serial to flash esp8266 is shared with panel serial and done using jumpers.
Creality main board profile

I worked on support based on 2.5rc1 but I can update as it was before Xmas ^_^,
I did not check the 3.0beta12 as we focused on existing base first

What I modified :
CoreNG with SAM4S_PDBOARD
https://github.com/Panucatt/CoreNG/tree/kinetica
commit
https://github.com/Panucatt/CoreNG/commit/6396890fb960796213d1aab88a3edab80da4b6b7

The variant is SAM4S8C and the flag is PDBOARD because of some modifications for the ESP8266 board and also UDD_ENABLE, UDD_NO_SLEEP_MGR like Maestro

Reprap
https://github.com/Panucatt/RepRapFirmware/tree/kinetica
commit : https://github.com/Panucatt/RepRapFirmware/commit/4a410aa42ff8f777391d4258d9f61b68deb5cf51

Board use KINETICA_G2 as flag and of course SAM4S8C ,RTOS, PDBOARD

I have added define for Kinetica in reprap code and also excluded kinetica directory from all others boards.

I am still wondering if adding the PDBOARD is necessary in DUETIAP, so it is not done yet

I should say I am not super good about the eclipse configuration part: .cproject, it seems different according eclipse version, when it looks ok in eclipse UI, it seems little bit messy in editing .cproject file, especially for reprap part.

About code addition:
Because serial is shared between ESP8266 and Panel when updating ESP firmware, I have added a function to disable/enable the GCODE input on the serial in WiFiInterface.cpp when doing update, reprap.GetGCodes().SetInputActive(6,false); and reprap.GetGCodes().SetInputActive(6,true);, may be the enabling is not necessary because screen need a restart but for safety I did it.

I fixed some warnings due new pinout

Feel free to ask me or to @royco if you have any question ^_^

Please let us know your comments and advices, so we could move forward to push a PR in github.

Thank you

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luc-github committed to Panucatt/CoreNG

Add Kinetica code base

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luc-github committed to Panucatt/RepRapFirmware

Aadd kinetica code base

dc42

Hi @LucTH,

@LucTH said in Add Kinetica G2 board support:

I am still wondering if adding the PDBOARD is necessary in DUETIAP, so it is not done yet

If the DIAG LED pin, SD card CD pin and USB VBus pin are the same as on the Maestro, then I think the IAP for Duet Maestro should work.

The existing TMC2208 drivers will work with the TMC2209, but without stall detection. We will add support for stall detection soon, because our Duet 3 Tool Board uses TMC2209. Have you changed the sense resistor value? On the Maestro we chose the value to give 1.6A full scale, but you might want to increase the range a little for the TMC2209, which would require a lower value sense resistor (and a corresponding increase in the current setting increment).

HTH David

royco

Hi @dc42

A different sense resistor value was used (0.10 ohm), still testing as to what max current it can be run.

Nice to hear stall detection is being added.

Tnx

LucTH

Ok,
it looks like Kinetica does not use same CS pin as Maestro and does not have USB Vbus pin, so I have to add an entry in DuetIAP
Noted ^_^
Thank you

dsk001

@lucth Hello, I have this board and was wondering if there has been any more firmware developments on it. I would like to update the firmware past the 2.5rc1

MalaMaker

I support the adding of the Kinetica G2 board support. Can the Maestro profile be used to get a more current version of firmware and web interface? @royco @LucTH

Firmware Currently Available for the Kinetica G2...
Firmware Name: RepRapFirmware for Kinetica G2
Firmware Electronics: Kinetica G2 Ethernet 1.0
Firmware Version: 2.05RC1R (2019-13-03b1)
Web Interface Version: 1.21.1

oliof

To those that still have their kinetica board, how much would ongoing support be worth to you? It seems like panucatt did the bare minimum to get the board up (no offense to @LucTH who did a good job on that all things considered), and has since ignored the board completely.

IMO the kinetica board is a subpar choice for it's price and you'd get a well supported replacement board for less than half an hour engineering freelancer time these days (-: (and a duet 3 mini for maybe a full hour of engineering freelancer time).

MalaMaker

@oliof I just purchased the board and installed it on my ender 3.

oliof

@malamaker I am very sorry to hear that. Maybe you still have a return window?

jay_s_uk

@malamaker i'd definitely be looking at returning it. I don't see this board getting any further support. having spoken to @LucTH, he has no plans to get RRF3 working on it

LucTH

Sorry for late answer I missed the notifications

I never got the board in hand, I did the porting by just reading original code and sending modified code to @royco who validate it, @royco supposed to send me a board but unfortunatly I never got it. So the code is the one I posted on github https://github.com/panucatt

I got request to move to RRF 3.0 but doing blind coding is not really fun - I posted the code to let anyone who has the board to improve it

MalaMaker

@lucth I understand. I'm a software dev myself so I sympathize. Coding blindly can lead to so much extra work in the end. Until I searched and probed this topic, nothing really show up online that this board is really a stale out of date product without support for the most important aspect of the board... the firmware. I hope @royco will take the product back if this is true that firmware support has died on this board. I going to reach out to his sales email and give him a chance to respond because he is really the one that can say what his plans are with this board.

I already have a duet 2 ethernet on my main printer and was looking for a drop in replacement for my ender 3 (my extra filler printer) that had the Duet web interface. I know the improvements that have been made with the latest firmwares which is why I care so much about upgrading the Kinetica G2. Was trying to make my life simpler by going with this board but ended up creating more work than if I just ordered and converted my ender to a Duet board.

jay_s_uk

@malamaker if you want a drop in, look at the fly-e3 or fly-e3-pro

MalaMaker

I was able to return the Kinetica G2 board and I am going with a Duet 3 mini instead.