Duex5 as RAMPS Like breakout board for $MCU's?

aenertia

Hi there ;

I have been eyeing up the schematics of the Duex5 as a potential breakout for drivers/heatbed/sensors. Have been trying to find something RAMPS-FD like for 3.3v MCU's that I can easily attach to various MCU boards for testing.

What (if anything) is missing off the Duex5 that I would need.

MCU targets in Mind are:

ESP32
STMF7 (Nucleo/OpenSTM)

If it's really just a matter of Hooking Duponts into the 50Pin connector the Duex5 seems like an ideal choice for Prototyping development from random MCU boards.

Would like to know if there are any gotcha's here?

Phaedrux

Have you heard of the Klipper project?

aenertia

@phaedrux said in Duex5 as RAMPS Like breakout board for $MCU's?:

Klipper

Yes - but I am after something more contained to develop marlin targets for.

dc42

That should be viable. You will need an SPI bus to configure the TMC2660 drivers. If you want to use the fan or GPIO outputs then you will also need a I2C bus and SX1509B driver to communicate with the I/O expander chip.

aenertia

plenty of I2C and SPI buses on the STM32F7 and the ESP32 ; so shouldn't be an issue there.

The limits are likely analogs (only 6 useable on the ESP32)

aenertia

@dc42 I get why the IO expander is needed for attachment to an existing maestro etc... but Given that both the ESP32 and the STM32 have plenty of GPIO's is there an easy way to bypass it and wire IO's directly? Or too much hassle ? Any downsides to using I2C over direct in this situation?

dc42

The IO expander also provides the additional PWM outputs for the fans. If you don't need them then there is no need to use the IO expander. The stepper drivers and heater outputs will work without it.