Newbie from the World of Klipper,Octoprint and Marlin

sjutmp

Hello Duet3d Members,

I am posting for simple and straightforward help. if there is a DUET 3 101/Dummies book please point me to it.

I have to state that my knowledge comes from Marlin, Octoprint and Klipper. I thought it prepared me to take on the DUET world. It is apparent have spoiled with such features a GUI that allows me to power-up/shut the controller board and view the progress of the print jobs. So please help me understand. The DUET 3 seems to have more ways of doing things then Houdini had methods of getting out locks/confinement.

As a Note Why I'm doing this to build a BLV MGN 300x300x640mm unit. It will employ a BLTouch, Sensorless homing and Hemera Volcano Hotend. It has long slog of printing,printing and putting together.

What I'm trying to Understand

Want power the DUET and SBC "Raspberry PI 4" separately for the 5 volt source. I have seen to many issues with Pi boards fall over with odd power ups.
Control the power supply with a Relay and the DUI interface.
View the print on Raspberry PI camera.

How do provide the power to the DUET and support the PSU Relay?

How do you update the DUI to do the power off/on with such features as wait until the system cool enough or simply not doing anything for a given time?

What is current opinion on Camera - User the DUET image or use the current Buster OS then add on to it?

gtj0

@sjutmp Your comment about Houdini is spot on but unfortunately it means we have to ask further questions.

Are you planning on powering the Duet and the Pi directly from the same 5v power supply or separate 5v power supplies?

When you say "power on/off" are you talking about...

The 12/24v power for the heaters, fans, etc.?
The 5v power to the Duet?
The 5v power to the Pi?

The Duet image is based on Raspbian so a Pi camera should work fine with the Duet image.

Danal

Welcome to the Duet community. A lot of VERY active people here, and we will help.

A few general comments:

Duet is completely dynamically configured. You never compile or generate. All config commands take immediate effect. This makes experimentation and learning very easy.
V3 of Duet firmware (which will run on Duet V2 or V3 hardware) is very new, and beta releases and documentation are still settling down. The firmware is called RRF2 or RRF3 for historic reasons (RepRap Firmware). I do recommend it; at the same time, expect to ask questions (here on this forum).
V3 hardware is also fairly new... I am running some of it, and it is great.
I happen to think Duet is light years ahead of Marlin, Klipper, and Octoprint. Just an opinion.
Duet has its own web interface. Upload a print file, start jobs, monitor, manage, etc, etc. There is no need for Octoprint or Repetier, or anything external to push stuff to the printer. In fact, it is sort of a bad idea because it bypasses a lot of the value.
All you really need is a browser.
Web interface, exactly how it is delivered turns into a long topic that I am intentionally glossing over for now. Just be aware of the "just a browser; forget external stuff" idea, for now.

sjutmp

@gtj0
I hope to have the Raspberry PI always on. It would allow me to view the status of the print before, during and after.

Is this possible?

Option 1 - Raspberry Pi leverages GPIO pins to activate the relay to drive the PSU

Option 2 - Duet handles the power up. I am not sure how that could happen as it would need 5 volt dc power externally.

sjutmp

@Danal

I agree with you that DUET is very advanced. I know that Klipper provides a method dispersed model of printing control of old "specialized" hardware and solid tech of Single Board Computer.

However, at this point this how I feel. Arthur C Clarke meant when he said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. If you show someone something that is so far advanced from the technology that they are used to that nothing about it is remotely familiar then you might as well be showing them a magic box.

I'm trying to understand this magic box.

Topher

This is exactly what I'm looking to do for the print farm our company is upgrading, the only change will be that we are looking to power the 5-volt side or DUET 3's with poe from our server rack that is battery backed up and has a VPN tunneling to allow us to securely control from home. I'm, not any help, unfortunately, I've been tasked with trying to figure this one out too lol

gtj0

@sjutmp Your second picture is how many people do it. The Pi can power the Duet3 via the ribbon cable with the appropriate jumpers and it will stay powered as long as there's power to the Pi. The relay should be a solid state relay and it would be connected to the PS_ON and 5V pins on the "EXT 5V" connector on the Duet. You can then use M80/M81 GCode commands to turn the 24v supply (heaters, fans, etc) on and off leaving the Pi and Duet electronics still powered. Alternatively, you can connect the 5V supply to the Duet and feed power back through the ribbon cable to power the Pi. Either way works. You may want to use a slightly higher power supply if you can. You might have trouble powering both the Pi and the Duet with 3 amps, especially if you plan on attaching USB powered devices to the Pi.

gtj0

@LeckieTech There are certainly PoE Hats for the Pi but the ones I've seen only provide 2.5A which would be on the very low side if it has to power both the Pi and Duet3. There may be others though. You could also use 2 external PoE splitters, one for the Pi and the other for the Duet. With the Pi connected, the Duet's ethernet is turned off but you could still get power from a PoE switch.

Danal

Yes, bottom diagram and slight variants thereof. @gtj0 makes several good points, the one I want to repeat for reinforce is be sure the Pi has enough power. I thought mine did for a long time, and then I found the particular log where I saw it was complaining every few seconds. Sheesh.

Anyway, you are on the right track, there's people here to help, keep asking Qs.