My Duet 3 board has arrived

fcwilt

Hi,

I've now joined the ranks of those who have braved a whole new piece of hardware.

For those of you who have a Duet 3 are you adding the Raspberry Pi or not?

If so, which version?

Thanks VERY much.

Frederick

Danal

Yes on the Pi, really wouldn't consider running without it. I chose a 4B, primarily because already I had one not committed to anything else. I would run a 3B+ as well. I probably would not bother with anything 'below' that.

The V3 RepRap beta code has come a long way in a short time. I'm using a D3 6HC base + D3 Expanders for a CoreXY, toolchanging, printer (the Jubilee) that is itself a beta in many ways. At this point, the Duet3 stuff is working well, while I debug the rest of the printer.

Fun stuff.

In what kind of printer are you going to put yours?

fcwilt

@Danal

I have no idea at the moment. I need to work with the board on the bench and become comfortable with the new hardware.

Frederick

Danal

For what it is worth, here is a working config.g

config (1).g

It took me longer than it should to understand the new way of doing things. Two concepts to grasp up front:

Pins are now labeled and generally must be explicitly assigned.
Define fans, temperature sensors, heaters, etc first (i.e. assign pins); then 'gather' them into a tool.

There's more... but those two ideas are a huge part of the foundation of transitioning your thinking.

fcwilt

Hi,

Thanks much.

I don't have my Pi yet and have found the DWC via the Ethernet connection works but is limited.

At least the board is alive and doing something.

Frederick

deckingman

@fcwilt For what it's worth, I do have a RPi (plus a Duet 3 main board and 3 prototype expansion boards). But at the moment, I'm running stand alone because I haven't found any compelling reason to do otherwise. I think the advantages of using a SBC are yet to come when people start writing add ons or plugins.
I've also been helping the Duet guys by testing and reporting firmware bugs and fixes with the expansion board firmware, and it has been necessary to cycle the power on numerous occasions. People have told me that killing power is not a kind thing to do to a RPi. So for now, it's fitted but not connected.

@deckingman said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

it has been necessary to cycle the power on numerous occasions. People have told me that killing power is not a kind thing to do to a RPi

part of the reason i chose to have a dedicated usb supply to the Pi instead of powering it off the Duet, also allows the Pi to control a relay that in turns control the main power for the router.

unexpected powerloss could lead to a corrupt filesystem, but the worst case scenario is "just" to rewrite the image onto the SD card and restoring configuration from backup, still easier to avoid while we wait for an image that is mostly read only to avoid the issue all together.

too

I would recommend having a Pi attached to the Duet3 as well. File uploads are much much faster (at least if you're dealing with very large files) and the possibilities of running plugins that can directly influence the gcode will be awesome!

As for the new config.g, it does help to have the configuration tool create a full configuration for the printer as reference.

Keep in mind that there are still some limitations within RRF3: https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_3_firmware_configuration_limitations

deckingman

@bearer I've actually installed a separate 5V supply for the RPi and with @wilriker's help, I have two ways to shut down the RPi in a controlled manner. The first is via a push button switch which will pull a pin low ( @wilriker has written a tiny script which listens for that event). The second way is via a DSF extension that @wilriker has written. So sending M7722 will also do a controlled shutdown of the RPi. The latter method is intended to be used in conjunction with my UPS. When it senses that the battery voltage has dropped to 21V, a set on contacts on the UPS closes. These contacts are connected to an input pin on the Duet which trigger a macro, which in turn will send M7722 to shutdown the RPi and also do a controlled shutdown of the printer before the batteries expire completely. That's the plan anyway, but at the moment, while I'm still testing firmware, I'm just running stand alone because it's one less thing in the chain (and I still haven't found the time to get my head around the RPi).

deckingman

@too said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

Keep in mind that there are still some limitations within RRF3: https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_3_firmware_configuration_limitations

For info, there are a couple of other things that aren't on that list. It currently isn't possible to run heater tuning on expansion boards and M581 on expansion boards isn't yet implemented. There are a couple of other things that are a bit "buggy" too but @dc42 is working his way through them.

wilriker

@Danal said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

Yes on the Pi, really wouldn't consider running without it. I chose a 4B, primarily because already I had one not committed to anything else. I would run a 3B+ as well. I probably would not bother with anything 'below' that.

I was running it with a 3B (no plus) in the beginning with no issues. Also that one should be considered a minimum as the performance of lower generations will probably not suffice to run DuetSoftwareFramework with the required performance.

fcwilt

@deckingman said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

But at the moment, I'm running stand alone because I haven't found any compelling reason to do otherwise.

I was able to setup a SD card with the DWC files and a very basic config.g file.

I can connect from my browser and interact as I am used to doing.

But I must have something wrong because there are some simple things that don't work.

For example, any attempt to create a file (in directory sys or macros) fails.

Any ideas what might be the cause of that?

Thanks.

Frederick

deckingman

@fcwilt No, it works for me - I just tried it. What version of DWC are you using? I'm on DWC 2.0.4.

A word of warning - make sure that "Use CRC checksums for uploads is enabled" (DWC - Settings - Machine Specific). There is currently a problem uploading any files and they can sometimes get scambled. If you get CRC errors, keep trying and after 1, 2 or sometimes 3 attempts, it will work successfully.

fcwilt

@deckingman said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

@fcwilt No, it works for me - I just tried it. What version of DWC are you using? I'm on DWC 2.0.4.

A word of warning - make sure that "Use CRC checksums for uploads is enabled" (DWC - Settings - Machine Specific). There is currently a problem uploading any files and they can sometimes get scambled. If you get CRC errors, keep trying and after 1, 2 or sometimes 3 attempts, it will work successfully.

Well I copied the iap4e.bin file to the sys directory on the SD card and put the card back into the Duet and now it seems to be working OK.

Thanks.

Frederick

I'm running a Rpi 3B+ on mine. No issues.

A little Linux experience helps but is not mandatory.

Personally don't see any positive effects of running a Duet 3 in standalone mode, But I'm sure there will be someone along momentarily disputing that though..

the biggest positive (for me) is that it brings wifi to the table - and likely a webcam shortly; but its hard to not argue that its just another thing that can break, so stand alone should statistically be more robust? (and cheaper:)

@bearer said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

the biggest positive (for me) is that it brings wifi to the table - and likely a webcam shortly; but its hard to not argue that its just another thing that can break, so stand alone should statistically be more robust? (and cheaper:)

I think it quite easy to argue for an SBC, I also think we can agree that the Rpi SBC is a mature enough technology to be considered sufficiently stable from a hardware point of view.

Also the additional feature set that an SBC brings to the table operating in parallel with the Duet 3 makes standalone operation, only makes sense as a last resort.

On the point of financial economics, I don't think the Duet 3 is aimed at the economy end of the market to the point of where an extra 40.00 or so units of money is going to be a deal breaker.

deckingman

@CaLviNx said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

Also the additional feature set that an SBC brings to the table operating in parallel with the Duet 3 makes standalone operation, only makes sense as a last resort.

Except that right now, at this point in time, the additional feature set for the RPi is practically non existent. My RPi is fitted and ready to go. But I re-iterate that as of now I don't see any compelling reason for me to "press the switch" as it were. When the firmware is a little more stable, and maybe when the pluggins or add ons start to materialise, then I'll start to use it.

Unless of course someone can give me a compelling reason why I should use it right now. I don't need WiFi and stand alone upload speeds of 1.1MiB/S are more than adequate. What else am I missing out on right now?

@CaLviNx said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

Personally don't see any positive effects of running a Duet 3 in standalone mode, But I'm sure there will be someone along momentarily disputing that though..

Nuramori

I received mine the other day, a ver1.0. Im curious what distinguishes it from ver 0.6

jay_s_uk

Mines waiting for me at the local sorting office

Danal

@deckingman said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

People have told me that killing power is not a kind thing to do to a RPi.

I think this is (ancient?) history. I use Pi based machines a lot, and I haven't shut one down in the last couple of years. Just punch power. I have never had any issues.

I can't prove this either way... but I've seen a lot of people say it is low to zero risk with current hardware and OS.

jens55

I have had several corrupt or dead memory cards on Pi Zero W's but they are cheap memory cards and get written to continuously in a surveilance camera setup. I now use industrial memory cards on anything that is critical. These cards have integral write equalization and the frequent writes are distributed all over the memory card automatically. Unfortunately you don't get these at your local drug store or Staples store and they might cost double of a cheap card.
I have had a pi 3B+ running OctoPrint for maybe 2 years without a single issue on a cheap card.

Danal

Hmmm... I have no way to verify, but I understood even "mid level" consumer SD are all built around chipsets that have wear leveling.

Not ultra-cheap crap, but not expensive speciality either.

Things like Sandisk should have it.

@Danal said in My Duet 3 board has arrived:

chipsets that have wear leveling.

physical damage and wear leveling is only one aspect, the other is partial filesystem updates which can in the worst scenario render the filesystem unbootable with the card being physically fine; albeit unlikely. I share your experience of not having had issues for the most part, but I've also experienced one case of total data loss with the only likely culprit being losing power a few times a week for a few weeks.