CNCPlotter

[drphilgood]

John,

How's this different from the Stepduino?

Can it actually replace the system on a 3dprinter?

[andrew]

The CNCPlotter is a one-off for an Arduino miniconference during a Linuxconf. Based on the ATmega32U4 as per the Arduino Leonardo, and designed to control two steppers and one servo.

Otherwise the StepDuino is an update which has the same function but uses an ATmega328P as per Arduino Uno and has native connections for two servos and two stepper motors.

Not for 3D printers as they would need three or more stepper motor controllers.

[pschulz01]

Greetings..
Is there any particular trick(process) to programming the board?

After I power on the board, it is waiting for serial input from the USB which it responds to, rather than the programming from the Arduino GUI. (The board does get the 'reset' after a programming attempt is made.)

I have the original board from the Workshop, which only draws boxes, and would like to put the most recent firmware on it.

Paul

[andrew]

Greetings..
Is there any particular trick(process) to programming the board?

After I power on the board, it is waiting for serial input from the USB which it responds to, rather than the programming from the Arduino GUI. (The board does get the 'reset' after a programming attempt is made.)

I have the original board from the Workshop, which only draws boxes, and would like to put the most recent firmware on it.

Paul

Just to confirm, if you plug it into a PC, set the "Arduino Leonardo" as the board type in the Arduino IDE - you can't upload a new sketch to it?

[pschulz01]

Greetings..
Is there any particular trick(process) to programming the board?

After I power on the board, it is waiting for serial input from the USB which it responds to, rather than the programming from the Arduino GUI. (The board does get the 'reset' after a programming attempt is made.)

I have the original board from the Workshop, which only draws boxes, and would like to put the most recent firmware on it.

Paul

Just to confirm, if you plug it into a PC, set the "Arduino Leonardo" as the board type in the Arduino IDE - you can't upload a new sketch to it?

Yes, that is correct. The board is detected as an "Arduino Leonardo".
The correct USB port is detected (otherwise I get an error).

The IDE tries to do the upload, but the board see this as assessing the serial port and tries to draw a box, rather than accepting the new firmware.

[angusgr]

This probably indicates that the "automatic reset" function isn't working for some reason. This is part of the sketch firmware running on the CNCPlotter, so if it doesn't work now then it should still work after a successful reflash.

Try pressing the reset button on the plotter board at roughly the same time as pressing Upload. It might take a couple of tries but it should upload, and after that the auto-reset will hopefully work again.