What advantages does PanelDue have over other displays?
-
I am strongly considering making PanelDue part of an upcoming build and I'm trying to determine if PanelDue is the right tool for the job. I love that it's from the same crew working on Duet. Aside from this connection is PanelDue superior to alternatives, like a touchscreen+pi+Octoprint?
From my limited time playing around with a PanelDue it seems to connect to the Duet and sends/receives data just like Octoprint might. But perhaps I'm missing something. Maybe PanelDue has some cool tricks up its sleeve. Maybe it can skip waiting for buffers or something else where others fall short.
Anyone have any comments in why one would opt for PanelDue specifically? Or on the flip side why one might consider an alternative?
-
For me, the PanelDue is essential. It gives me a 99.999% reliable solution for controlling the printer. (I've never had a problem, but nothing is 100%). The web interface has had reliability issues for me in the past. Also, the paneldue seems a tiny bit more responsive than the web interface for pause/cancel commands.
One nice thing about the PanelDue over other more simple LCD panels on other controllers, is the ability to tether the PanelDue on quite a long cable, so you can (if it's in a nice enclosure) carry it around while calibrating/moving the toolhead. This is very very useful, and I always use it when I'm doing precise movement/measurement for calibration.
All in all, for me, it's an essential part of any Duet.
-
I have one each of my duets. It controls them very reliably. Octoprint may not know to use the Duet's gcode folder to print from since the 8-bit controllers that it was originally designed for don't use a folder structure.
-
I am obviously biased, and I haven't used Octoprint. So the following may not be entirely correct (somebody please correct me if I am wrong), but here goes:
- Octoprint won't provide access to the macros that you define in the /macros folder of the SD card, but maybe it has its own macro facility.
- I don't know whether it shows the active and standby head temperatures for use with multiple extrusion machines, because many other firmwares don't have any concept of standby temperature.
- When printing from SD card, it won't show you the detailed progress and time estimates that PanelDue does. It may possibly show an estimate based on the percentage of the file that has been processed.
- It won't show you detailed information about the gcode files on the SD card
- It won't show you the Z probe reading
- It will only show you a subset of the printer states - you will probably get "Idle" and "SD printing", but not "Starting up", "Firmware Update", "Resuming" etc. Nor will it show you the heater states.
All the above could obviously be fixed by modifying the Octoprint software.
If you do want to go the RPi + touchscreen route, the setup appears to be quite complicated, and you need to follow a specific shutdown procedure. See http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=10693. Whereas PanelDue is plug-and-play.
HTH David
-
Add to all of that, the rPi will keep your duet board powered up when you shut down your machine!
Hands down, you should use a PanelDue for a Duet build.
-
Thanks for the comments everyone! As for David please be as biased as you want. I had hoped you could chime in (but didn't want this to be discouraging). I had my fingers crossed there might be some other fancy functions that were PanelDue-only that might sway the direction I end up going.
In any case thanks for the input everyone
Either way I'm thrilled with everything so far, both the Due and the Duet Wifi. Awesome job David! -
One of the PanelDue features not mentioned which I particularly like is the virtual keyboard to send Gcodes to the Duet.
