Best posts made by likhalabs

Hi all,

I'd like to introduce Phi, an open-source 3D printer controller with built-in Wi-Fi and Ethernet and runs RepRapFirmware v3.3. I've been working on this for the past few months, planning to eventually launch a crowdfunding campaign. The pre-launch page is already up at https://www.crowdsupply.com/likhalabs/phi-mainboard-5lc. More details about the board can be found on the pre-launch page.

Just to clarify, this has no affiliation with Duet3D, hence posting here on the Other control boards category. This is simply a controller that uses RepRapFirmware, which some members might find interesting. If you do find it interesting, please do subscribe to updates on the pre-launch page to not miss the launch announcement and other information drop.

@o_lampe

Will there be a benefit from the dual processors?

To preface this, in a typical Duet board, networking, GUI, kinematics, stepping, etc. are normally done in a single microcontroller. In Phi, these tasks are split across two microcontrollers.
Networking, GUI, and other stuff not related to sensing/driving something in the machine runs on the ESP32, the rest runs on the SAME51. The benefit is that less tasks share processing resources in each microcontroller. This also means more room to grow for each part. For example, the networking and display stuff running on the ESP32 has more RAM, processing power at its disposal. I can allocate more RAM to network buffers, for example, to speed up network transfers without worrying about choking the kinematics/stepper driving part because the latter are in another microcontroller, the SAME51.

Will this board support all the foreseeable features of RRF (like input shaping, multi-stream gcode)

I was actually tracking official RepRapFirmware development since last year, when it was still 3.1.1. You can see my previous progress here: https://github.com/likha3d/Duet3D-RepRapFirmware. I'm now on 3.3. I've been merging new features from newer versions without much problem so far, as I ensure changes I make have little conflict with the official RepRapFirmware development as much as possible. So I'm confident in merging new developments from the official RepRapFirmware branch going forward.

Is it possible to run daemon.g from the ESP flash (more frequently)?

Behavior related to running daemon.g is unchanged from official RepRapFirmware.

Do the expansion ports have unique pins or do they share some pins and put us users in an either/or conflict? (eg. using an LCD on port x, blocks extension y)

EXP1/EXP2 ports share pins with PanelDue 10-pin/4-pin port. This means that you cannot use EXP1/EXP2 and PanelDue at the same time. However, as far as I know, using multiple types of displays is not even supported in firmware, so this pin sharing should not matter.

All other pins are unique pins, as far as regular end-users are concerned (a couple of debug pins are shared, should only matter to developers). I'll share a pin diagram closer to launch.

Last not least, I couldn't find information about likhalabs. Who are you, where is your headquarter?

Fair point. Finding information about Likha Labs is going to be difficult, since I just started (as a full-time commitment) and I'm basically a one-person-team at the moment. I'm an embedded software engineer from the Philippines. I used to work for Espressif, as a developer on ESP-IDF (renzbagaporo).. I decided to try my hand at integrating an ESP32 on a 3D printer controller to assume the same functions an SBC would, as nobody was doing it.

The campaign is live! Please check it out if you're interested.

I've been trying to improve upload speed for Phi. Finally broke the 1MiB/s barrier!

There's still some room for improvement, though.