Marlin feature requests/ wishlist

[destroyer2012 0]

Dear Marlin coders,

You guys are super cool! I'm a huge fan of your firmware and how you made the code easy to read!

That said here's a few things that I thought would be super awesome if they were in the firmware:

1.) Support for more buttons and encoders on the panel interface

2.) Retraction/priming, using some Gcodes to specify when it happens/ squirts back out.

3.) Volumetric extrusion (specify volume to extrude instead of mm to move the filament)

4.) Ability to adjust the speed and mm per click that jogs happen

5.) Support for a z-probe (not sure if this exists already? I haven't built one yet but I plan on it)

Keep up the good work!

[joergen 2]

here's a few things that I thought would be super awesome if they were in the firmware:

I would say that it is almost pointless to post marlin feature requests here, since marlin is not UM specific. You would have much better luck if you post it on Erik zalm's github page for marlin.

[Daid 306]

But I read this here.

1) More buttons? The original version of the LCD had lots of more buttons. It was complex to use. It's a case of "less is more"

2) Done. G10 and G11 in the latest Marlin sources.

3) Nothing in Marlin stops you from doing this already. It's just that the set standard is currently mm of extrusion.

4) All numbers adjusting functions can use an update. Adjusting the steps-per-e per 0.01 is also silly when the number is over 900.

5) Not sure what you mean with a Z-Probe.

[futurejames 0]

5) Not sure what you mean with a Z-Probe.

Zee aliens are going to use zee probe on you Daid, run!

At a guess I think destroyer meant a probe to assist in levelling the bed. Just a guess though.

Why can't 1 and 4 be together? I would love it if I had a second wheel for levelling the bed. I don't really want to move at tenths of a millimeter when I have to move to each corner of the bed.

[destroyer2012 0]

Sorry I guess since the version of marlin i downloaded from the marlin github had ultimaker specific settings and comments in it i figured it was leaning more towards ultimaker development now, but I see that's wrong.

Well anyway a discussion here is as good as anywhere

 

1) More buttons? The original version of the LCD had lots of more buttons. It was complex to use. It's a case of "less is more"

 

Just because something has more buttons doesn't necessarily mean it's more complex to use. I want buttons so I can switch to jog without having to go through three menus (Prepare>Move Axis>X). And it's so frustrating that the menus reset after like half a second, so if I'm trying to level the bed and take a bit longer to crank that screw I have to traverse the menus AGAIN to move the head back the other way. Another thing that might help is a "home" button so you can forget about resetting the menus. Or at least make that timeout a lot longer.

This is, again, something I will never understand: If there's an ability to use more buttons why not leave it as an option? Maybe I just haven't read enough about the firmware but wouldn't it be cool to be able to enable different subsets of the firmware, one of which has X, Y, Z jog buttons and another one (for laymen maybe? Who is a layman ultimaker operator?) which only has that click-wheel.

If you've ever used a real CNC machine you know the jog panel has a lot of buttons but they are all very useful and make operating it way, way easier. For example you can switch between which axis you are jogging and how much you are jogging it by all with button presses on the jog panel. It's so intuitive too... just press which axis you want to move and then it moves. So maybe what we need is a separate hand-held remote that is only for jog commands...

 

5) Not sure what you mean with a Z-Probe.

this

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7550

 

[joergen 2]

But I read this here.

4) All numbers adjusting functions can use an update. Adjusting the steps-per-e per 0.01 is also silly when the number is over 900.

so is this issue fixed, or are all those functions still 1/100 steps in the UC?

[Daid 306]

But I read this here.

4) All numbers adjusting functions can use an update. Adjusting the steps-per-e per 0.01 is also silly when the number is over 900.

so is this issue fixed, or are all those functions still 1/100 steps in the UC?

It's not fixed. I want to fix it, but when I do I will overhaul all LCD menu code, because it's a huge mess.

 

Just because something has more buttons doesn't necessarily mean it's more complex to use. I want buttons so I can switch to jog without having to go through three menus (Prepare>Move Axis>X). And it's so frustrating that the menus reset after like half a second, so if I'm trying to level the bed and take a bit longer to crank that screw I have to traverse the menus AGAIN to move the head back the other way. Another thing that might help is a "home" button so you can forget about resetting the menus. Or at least make that timeout a lot longer.

The timeout has bugged me as well, I even removed it on my "demo" firmware.

 

This is, again, something I will never understand: If there's an ability to use more buttons why not leave it as an option? Maybe I just haven't read enough about the firmware but wouldn't it be cool to be able to enable different subsets of the firmware, one of which has X, Y, Z jog buttons and another one (for laymen maybe? Who is a layman ultimaker operator?) which only has that click-wheel.

Everything in the menu code code overhauled after the many-button solution. So the old code would no longer have worked.

 

If you've ever used a real CNC machine you know the jog panel has a lot of buttons but they are all very useful and make operating it way, way easier. For example you can switch between which axis you are jogging and how much you are jogging it by all with button presses on the jog panel. It's so intuitive too... just press which axis you want to move and then it moves. So maybe what we need is a separate hand-held remote that is only for jog commands...

There is a huge difference between a CNC mill and a 3D printer. And that's that you do not need to set the "home" position on a 3D printer, like on a CNC mill. But adding some extra button support shouldn't be hard in the firmware. It's just that there is no standard hardware for it yet. Which would make support a bit random.

 

5) Not sure what you mean with a Z-Probe.

this

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7550

 

Ah, ok. No support for it yet, but it's somewhere all the way down on my todo-list.

[buildrob 0]

Hi Daid,

When you refactor the LCD firmware could you change the lcd.createChar(...) abstraction method to also take an ANSI equivalent representation as an argument for LCD implementations which cannot support special bitmapped characters (for instance a VT100 serial Wifi implementation of an LCD interface). This can be ignore for implementations which can render bitmapped characters.

[i just remembered that the LiquidCrystal.h is in the Arduino common code so of course you can't change that class directly.]

[Daid 306]

When you refactor the LCD firmware could you change the lcd.createChar(...) abstraction method to also take an ANSI equivalent representation as an argument for LCD implementations which cannot support special bitmapped characters (for instance a VT100 serial Wifi implementation of an LCD interface). This can be ignore for implementations which can render bitmapped characters.

I'm factoring in more then just that. I'm abstracting the LCD physical implementation from the menu logic. So you could use a character display, graphical display, or an morse code sender if you wish. You just need a new physical layer implementation.

[buildrob 0]

That sounds great. Hopefully you'll be able to arrange it so that adding something such as:

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?146,1 ... msg-166751

in the future won't be too difficult.

[Daid 306]

That sounds great. Hopefully you'll be able to arrange it so that adding something such as:

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?146,1 ... msg-166751

in the future won't be too difficult.

Yeah, that would be easier with my new code. I got basic menus and the status screen working again, still need to do the SD file menu, and parameter adjustment items.