can a duet wifi withe a duex5 do all the stuff i need it to?

RUWO

I was directed here form the 3Dprinter discord and told to ask for dc42 by some people after asking for a control board suggestion(they suggested a duet) but couldn't answer if it could do some of the very specific things I need it to do. the software is not a real issue, I'm more interested in if the gen 2 board with a duex5 can do it hardware-wise.

I'd like to run 2 camera's, 9 independent steppers with 2 of them in an h-bot style coreXY, interface with the YOLO API, send serial commands to 5 other MCU's(most likely Arduino nano's), run like 15-ish relays off of it(so I need an SPI/i2c bus for a multiplexer; I don't actually expect 20 io pins).
also, is the firmware well documented and easily modifiable? I have some dev's on-hand, but that's no good with obfuscated code. I would need some custom g-codes and adaptive movement. like G163 should move the head to the nearest pre-defined position on the bed. if you know any of this, or have further questions/suggestions, I would appreciate a reply.

thanks in advance, a potential customer.

dc42

Thank you for your enquiry. A Duet WiFi or Duet Ethernet plus a DueX5 board gives you:

10 independent stepper motor drivers, each rated at 2.4A peak
One USB device port
One serial port
One SPI port, which could be programmed as serial instead
Micro SD card socket
WiFi or Ethernet interface
I2C bus, used for communication between the Duet and the DueX5, and optionally to communicate with a third-party SX1509B-based I/O board as well
8 high current mosfet outputs (1 rated at 18A, the rest good for at least 5A) with variable-frequency PWM
9 low current mosfet outputs (good for about 1.5A), 3 with variable frequency PWM and 6 with fixed frequency PWM
5 endstop inputs with LEDs
5 endstop input that could be reprogrammed as outputs
About 5 addition input/outputs
If you add the third-party SX1509B-based I2C expander, another 16 ports, normally used as outputs but could be reprogrammed to be inputs

There is no support for directly-connected cameras. I am not familiar with the YOLO API.

You can find the firmware source code at https://github.com/dc42/RepRapFirmware.

HTH David

RUWO

@dc42 yolo api is a computer vision cloud service. Basicly i need to send http request and send an image a couple times a second. Would the ethernet board be capable of this, or would the conection be too slow/ too much computational overhead? Would it be feasable to use a usb hub with the usb port, and plug in 2 webcams to that? As a last question, how many adresses does the i2c bus support? Again, thanks for your quick reply!

dc42

The USB interface is device-only (not host), so it would not be able to communicate with cameras. To handle the cameras, you would be better using a RPi or similar, perhaps using the Duet + DueX5 as a slave to handle the stepper motors and I/O ports.

The I2C interface on the Duets supports both 7- and 10-bit addressing, but the SX1509B used on the DueX5 only supports 7-bit addressing. So a maximum of 128 I2C devices in theory, however the i2C bus will stop working long before that due to bus loading.

RUWO

@dc42 i’m sorry, but in that case the duet is not a good option for my printer. I can achieve more functionallity with an rpi 3 and 2 cheap dumb boards with klipper, which will be cheaper too. I can add hundreds of seperate mcu’s in that case, so that’s what i’m going for. you make a really great board, but i’m afraid it’s not suited for my project.

Regards, ruwo