Mixing stepper drivers on SKR 3 EZ
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I wanted to upgrade my corexy printer from tmc2209 to tmc5160 EZ drivers for 48v operation. Mainboard is a SKR 3 EZ. According to the documentation on the TeamGloomy website, this board does not support mixing SPI with UART drivers, so I decided to also buy two tmc2130 EZ drivers for the z axis. Guess my suprise when I learn that there is no native suport for tmc2130 in rrf.
Does anyone know if I can operate the EZ drivers in step/dir mode? If yes, how do I change the stepper driver current? Should I just plugin the 2209's (stepstick format) and modify the config to drive them with step/dir comands?
Is it possible to modify rrf to support 2130 drivers? I'm willing to spend some time tinkering with compiling rrf.
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@justGuner it's a limitation of that board I'm afraid as there is no way to set SPI and UART.
You could operate them in "stepdir" mode but being unable to turn off the UART/SPI pins may lead to difficulties.
And as you've pointed out, there no way to set the current or even the microstepping on the driver so you may be out of luck there.
We haven't added TMC2130 drivers as they tend to run hot and don't add anything that 2208/2209 drivers are missing. I'm not sure how easy it would be to add support yourself. Maybe @gloomyandy can comment. -
Not something I've ever looked at as the 2130 is a pretty old design these days not offering any advantages over 2209/5160/2240 drivers. You may be able to modify the 5160 driver to support them, but that driver is already fairly complex (which is another reason I've never wanted to add 2130 support). You may just be better selling the 2130s and buying either more 5160s or 2240s (if they are available in the ez format).
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@gloomyandy 2240's are only available as stepsticks for now, I don't see how that would create an issue though.
The angel on my right shoulder is telling me to sell or return the 2130's and buy compatible drivers, while the devil on my left is whispering to my ear to find the schematics of the board, cut and solder the appropriate tracks in order to select uart mode.
Now that I think about it, how does the board know to use uart or spi if you can't "install the proper jumpers"?
Guess this is what you get for not reading the documentation properly.
Sidenote: on the TeamGloomy page at the skr 3 ez general information section it shows the driver ports for the skr 3, not the EZ variant.
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Hypothetically speaking, would it be possible to just bridge the correct pins in order to select uart for the z drivers?
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Well, well, look what I found in the user's manual for the skr 3 EZ:
You might wanna add this to the TeamGloomy page.
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@justGuner
That's why we have this note. I should probably update it anyway to lump 2240s in with 5160s and mention it only applies to stepsticksAnd I'll look at updating the driver image
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@justGuner I'm still not sure what you are intending to do.
My understanding is that the problem with this board is that the SPI bus used for the drivers is always connected to the pins on the step stick sockets. This means that if that bus is in use (to talk to spi based drivers) then these pins will be active. Typically stepstick based UART based modules use these pins to configure things like microstepping and other functions and the active spi pins will cause problems for the driver. The EZ style modules for UART based drivers avoid this issue by simply not connecting the SPI pins to the driver chip (which is fine as they are not used for UART based drivers). I think that in theory this means you can mix spi and uart based drivers so long as the UART based drivers are EZ modules, but that is not something I've ever tested.
So I do not think you will be able to use your 2209 drivers if they are stepstick modules. You may be able to get them to work by cutting/removing the pins that would normally connect the stepstick to clk/mosi/miso (do not remove the CS pin as that is used for the UART signal) on the stepstick modules.
None of this impacts 2130 support, we just don't currently support those drivers.
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@gloomyandy yeah, I should have been more clear, all of the messages above were for trying to get the 2209's to work in uart mode. I've changed the title of this topic to better reflect my current situation.
@jay_s_uk said in Accidentally bought tmc2130:
That's why we have this note. I should probably update it anyway to lump 2240s in with 5160s and mention it only applies to stepsticks
I was referring to the last part that mentiones the mixing of EZ drivers.
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I might be onto something:
I cut off the pins that I don't need on the 2209 from the J3 column (pins 2, 3 & 5).
After declaring the drivers in the board.txt file this is the status of the drivers from m122:
(I think my driver 1 socked is broken, no matter what I put in there it sais that there is no driver, I will look into it some other time)Now I need to reconnect the cables to the board as before so that I can go on with testing.
Update:
Succes! All axis moving as they should.
