@Phaedrux said in Whats does the roadmap look like for variables?:
@deckingman said in Whats does the roadmap look like for variables?:
No I don't fancy the idea of running a beta firmware at this stage
While I understand the reluctance, wouldn't it be helpful to test the firmware before release to ensure the bugs are resolved rather than wait for the final release and discover there are the same or different bugs meaning having to wait again for another firmware release? Just sayin.
Up until a few months ago I used to do exactly that. But I've had my fingers burnt a few times in the past.
Classic example - earlier design versions of my hot end suffered a lot of stringing and I thought it was the complexity of the mixing chamber making retractions less effective. It turns out that the cause was the poor step pulse frequency. I had been using 64x micro-stepping (because that's what I used on Duet2) but RRF 3 did not report hiccups on expansion boards so I had no way of knowing about the firmware step pulse frequency issue. It was only when 3.1.1 came along that hiccups were reported and could see immediately that I was getting very high hiccup count during retractions. So I wasted a lot of time and effort re-designing my mixing chamber to reduce stringing when all I needed to do was reduce the micro-stepping from 64X to 16X to get around the firmware problem and restore proper retractions.
So if something strange or unexpected does happen with this hot end version, and I change the firmware as well, I can't be sure whether any problems would be related to the design or configuration of the hot end, rather than caused by a potential bug/change in behaviour of the firmware.
In a nutshell, I don't have a working hot end as a baseline against which I could evaluate any firmware changes. So any feedback I could give might be flawed due to some sort of mechanical issue with my experimental hot end.
The old adage "change only one thing at a time" is the only sensible way to develop something IMO.
