Formbot Troodon RRF 3.1.1 Update

mikejr83

Hi all! I just finished reading through the thread. I'd really like to pick up a Troodon. They're on sale at the moment! I had been looking to get a Voron or clone but want to order one "thing", be it a partial assembled printer or whole kit, and assemble it as opposed to ordering parts from vendor X and other stuff from vendor Y. I figured that the Troodon would be the closest I could get.

Anyhow, I stumbled on this thread while attempting to perform some due diligence. As others have noted there is no firmware download located on their website. This concerned me and Googling for "Troodon Firmware" presents this thread as the first result.

I thought I would add my voice in for wondering about where the current situation is with respect to newer firmware versions appearing on this machine. I obviously do not expect the Duet3D project and maintainers to be investing a large amount of time or effort supporting a cloned product, and I applaud the helpful questions and answers that are here. I am more wondering: Is there is any active work trying to debug it or the situation is more in Vivedino's court?

One last thing, for those of you who have this printer, what is your perception on the level of difficulty in changing the current controller out to an official Duet setup? I had hoped that if the board with the Troodon was a clone that they would at least have used similar connectors to the point where it the only hassle would be mounting the required two Duet boards.

One thing about these "cheaper" printers is that they use these clone parts. It keeps the price down and I don't mind it so much. However, as I get accustomed to the printer I almost always replace the cloned parts for the real deal. For instance, I'm not going to bother with their Mosquito clone. I'd much rather get the real one from Slice Engineering and support them. Suffice to say, I hope to do the same with the board regardless of the ability to get Vivedino firmware updates or make my own. My large concern is that I'm now seeing that the version of firmware on this printer is a major revision old. I'd like to at least be able to get to a later version before I introduced the change in hardware.

Thanks again for everyone contributing to the conversation!

Veti

@mikejr83 said in Formbot Troodon RRF 3.1.1 Update:

One last thing, for those of you who have this printer, what is your perception on the level of difficulty in changing the current controller out to an official Duet setup? I had hoped that if the board with the Troodon was a clone that they would at least have used similar connectors to the point where it the only hassle would be mounting the required two Duet boards.

it depends which duet you are gonna get.
obviously i cant say anything about mounting the board itself.

assuming that you would want to get a duet 3 when upgrading, you will need to recrimpt the connectors for the motors, paneldue and hotend connectors. the fan connectors can stay the same, but you need to change the housing on the endstop probe connectors.
the config you can take as a starting and need to change the pin names.

i dont think it will be that much work.

nomukaiki

@Veti said in Formbot Troodon RRF 3.1.1 Update:

@mikejr83 said in Formbot Troodon RRF 3.1.1 Update:

One last thing, for those of you who have this printer, what is your perception on the level of difficulty in changing the current controller out to an official Duet setup? I had hoped that if the board with the Troodon was a clone that they would at least have used similar connectors to the point where it the only hassle would be mounting the required two Duet boards.

it depends which duet you are gonna get.
obviously i cant say anything about mounting the board itself.

assuming that you would want to get a duet 3 when upgrading, you will need to recrimpt the connectors for the motors, paneldue and hotend connectors. the fan connectors can stay the same, but you need to change the housing on the endstop probe connectors.
the config you can take as a starting and need to change the pin names.

i dont think it will be that much work.

I agree with this comment. It doesn't seem to be a difficult job to replace the board, since all the parts are the most common ones, only the board is bespoke. I also feel that the clone board is also compatible with latest duet firmware, the challenge is getting the correct pins/names and settings in the config.g . I did upgrade successfully to 3.2beta but getting the settings migrated is a different story, and is it really worth it? Why change what's not broken?

Veti

@nomukaiki said in Formbot Troodon RRF 3.1.1 Update:

clone board

its not technically a cloned board. its a compatible board. since they designed their own board which is pin compatible with replaceable drivers.

Robthide37

@nomukaiki The prob is the stallgaurd pin is not correctly routed its a hardware prob that can be worked around in source code i am sure but you would have to compile your own version

Veti

dont use stallguard then.

Robthide37

@Veti You did not read the thread i assume lol

Veti

@Robthide37
not the klipper part.

would it be possible to cut the pin on the driver?

nomukaiki

Has anyone tested the Troodon with the latest release v3.2 ?

Guzzi

Just tried the PRF 3.3RC3 with the same result! No changes so far! motor phase A may be disconnected_release_3.3RC3.jpg

koreandi

Good morning together..

I just got a Vivedino Trodoon 400.
It ran with Duet 2.x and I wanted to upgrade it to an actual Duet Firmware.

However.. After upgrading to 3.0 all seemed to work fine.
After upgrading to 3.3 I got the same issues as reported by Guzzi.

I should have read this topic before upgrading my system.

I am not able to downgrade the Firmware to earlier FW releases.
After uploading the Firmware the machine refuses to upgrade with error, something like that:

M997 In-application programming binary Duet2_SDiap32_WiFiEth.bin not found

Even if I manual put this file in to System it does not work.

Any tipps or workflows how to downgrade back to 3.0?
I have read different topics but it was too much input last night and I had to got to bed...

greetings
Andreas

PCR

@koreandi was already fixed. Try updating to 3.4B6

All hail to @oliof who bought a formbot board only to solve the issue.

koreandi

@PCR
Sounds great. I didn´t considered any beta realeses till now.
I will try that in the afternoon and will report about it.

Thanks a lot.

koreandi

@pcr
Hmm. I still don´t manage to get any other version installed.
Still the same message:

Error: M997: In-application programming binary "0:/firmware/Duet2_SDiap32_WiFiEth.bin" not found

koreandi

@koreandi
Okay.. I rerolled 3.3 and afterwards 3.4B6 worked...
I will test the functions.

Thanks a lot.

nomukaiki

With the RRF 3.4 these problems seem to have gone.
Can this thread be marked as resolved to help anyone that is searching the forum?

patate1684

@nomukaiki I got a formbot Troodon and I am looking to updating the firmware. After reading this entire thread, from what I understand, i can safely update to RRF 3.4 and everything should work as intended. (With the appropriate changes to the config file of course). Am I correct ?

jay_s_uk

@patate1684 that appears to be the long and short of it, yes

TheBasedDoge

I updated my Troodon to Release 3.4.1 RC1 and it works but i have two issues

When the printer first starts up, it says the motor phase error, but if i click ok it just seems to work.
The screen won't connect anymore, it just says "connecting.." forever.

any ideas?

oliof

@thebaseddoge the motor phase error in the beginning is due to the missing drivers in the board design. If they only happen during startup you have nothing to worry about.

For the display you may need to add an explicit M575 P0 B57600 at the end of config.g -- this wasn't required in earlier releases of RRF, but is required for the current ones.