Adding a second display?

[jayeye 0]

Between generally poor eyesight and oncoming presbyopia, I find the little display on the UM2 hard to read without sitting down in front of it, which is generally inconvenient. Any of the following would be acceptable solutions:

 

1. Replace the built-in display with a large display that I can move higher up.
   
2. Add a second display and hack the firmware to drive both.
   
3. Just use octoprint/octopi connected to the USB port, and put a display on that (there is some support for the piTFT display from Adafruit.
   

has anyone tried any of these, and have any words of wisdom before I go down the rabbit-hole? Here are my concerns, respectively:

 

1. This would require (a) finding the part number of the original display, (b) finding a compatible larger display, and © ascertaining that the little flexboard connector can be safely extended without degrading the signal (the display has an SPI interface, right?)
   
2. I'm not afraid to hack the firmware, but I don't see how additional stuff can be attached on the existing controller board, unless I repurpose the test-point pads to use as additional output pins, and (in the worst case) bitbang the necessary signals.
   
3. This is the least-intrusive way, and I've already experimented with octopi, but octoprint has no support for the ultimaker flavor of gcode. I've tried generating reprap gcode with cura and printing it with octopi, but the whole home-head-extrude-filament-to-get-it-going-then-start-to-print was skipped, so I'm definitely missing something. I haven't had time to debug that yet, so any additional information of how to get the thing going with octopi would be nice.
   

 

Comments? Suggestions? Mints?

Thanks,

/ji

 

[korneel 175]

i'm using OctoPrint and that works like a charm together with PiTFT.

however, you need to change the default behaviour of the code to make sure it expells enough filament before printing..

 

[amedee 349]

A crazy idea -- not sure how far this is applicable: replace the display by the RepRap Discount full graphic controller and use the UMO+ firmware.

You will loose the 'profiles' things from the UM2, but it will be the case as well if you use OctoPrint.

A picture of this display: