Its_All.Lost
Because hope just breeds everlasting misery…

Elegoo Neptune 4 Max

Elegoo Neptune 4 Max

(UPDATED)

Let me start all of this with I am not an engineer nor an expert at 3D printing. This is all just shit that I have picked up over the years, read about or came across. I just want to spread some information and maybe help someone. Try the following at your own risk, I am not responsible for what you do. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

 

Intro

A month or so ago I upgraded my trusty old Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 to a Elegoo Neptune 4 Max. Wow. I’ve been printing non stop. This thing is a beast! Its freaking huge and it prints fast! My Monoprice is still going strong, and I actually gifted it to my son-in-law, but I needed a bigger build platform and I wanted speed. It was down to an Anycubic Kobra 2 Max or the Elegoo Neptune 4 Max. If you do your research you will find tons of posts of people that got the N4M and hated it, to return it and get the Kobra 2 Max. With just as many people who did the opposite and ended up sending the Kobra 2 Max back to get a Neptune 4 Max. I was sold on the fact that it runs Klipper. It may be an Elegoo version of Klipper but it is Klipper. There are people working on OpenNept4une, a firmware replacement for Elegoo’s Klipper. I have also heard that someone is working on a pure Debian version of community Klipper. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately this requires buying a USB to eMMC adapter to flash the machine which I don’t have. I have not done this yet and I am not sure if I will. But it is an option. You can find more information on the Elegoo Discord. Some are also upgrading the main board to something like a BTT Manta and Pi TFT50. One of the things I’ve heard when playing with the alternate firmware(s) is you may lose the functionality of the touchscreen, no bueno.

If you are new to printing or this is your first don’t expect a nice fat user manual or handbook to walk you through. You are going to have to survive off a collection of online help. Don’t expect to get a ton of super helpful customer support from a company in China like Elegoo. You are much better off on their Discord or in a Facebook group, and websites.

Even with my knowledge of the past few years it took me almost two full rolls of filament to get it dialed in. But now it prints beautifully every time, and fast. So expect to be tweaking your profile for a bit and doing lots of bed leveling and printing lots of first layer sheets and benchys along with XYZCubes. Run the tests, it helps.

The following is a mash up of some tips I have tried and figured out, or I have read about and found online.

Some of these steps may seem tedious or you just don’t want to do them, but it will save you time, headache, and filament – which is money. When I first started out for the longest time I never wanted to “waste” time with the calibration prints. Trust me you waste more time by not doing them. Orca makes it easy now anyway.

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Wanhao i3 32bit upgrade

Maker Select 32Bit Upgrade

I decided to make the jump to 32bit printing. I upgraded from a stock Melzi on a Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 (a rebranded Wanhao i3, Cocoon Create). I had no real reason to other than I wanted something to do and I figured this would be a good project, and as always I’m looking for better prints. So why not? I got a BIGTREETECH SKR 1.3 and five (5) TMC2208 v3.0 UART ready steppers. I pulled the trigger and went all in head first after a single night of research. To be honest though when I started this journey there was not a lot of info for doing this just yet, the SKR was still pretty new. What info I have found came mostly from some facebook groups (BIGTREETECH) I am in and a few YouTube videos. But as I type this there is now tons of info available, just most of seems to be directed towards the Ender printers, yay.

 

Things to note up front:

This guide is a long one, I would read this all the way through first it’ll save you a headache. From what I read the TMC2208s don’t support Linear Advance while in stealthchop. It must be disabled and used as spreadcycle over UART instead if you want Linear Advance. The other option is to use a different driver than a 2208 for the extruder. This would get around the Linear Advance issue. It may also be fixed in Marlin further down the line, who knows.

Getting everything setup including the new programming environment was a pain in the ass, hopefully this “guide” will alleviate some of the pain.

I recommend that you DO NOT buy the TFT35 or any TFT (except maybe the new dual mode TFTs). The dual screens can switch between TFT mode and 12864 LCD mode. The regular TFTs do not have all the functionality of a regular LCD screen. I ordered the TFT35 at first and after two days I sent it back and got a LCD12864 Graphical display instead. Thats the route I am gonna go. The stock screen on a Wanhao i3 is not compatible with the SKR as far as I have been able to find, unless you rewire the plug (see comments below for pinout). The TFT35 was $32 and the LCD12864 was only $12. Heres a good video showing the TFT35.

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Neopixel Notifier

Neopixel Notifier

I was looking for solutions to make a notifier to for various projects. I while back I made something similar with a small OLED screen but this time I wanted something more “wife friendly” so I set out. I had a few neopixel WS2812 RGB LEDs laying around and some NodeMCU ESPs. I went with a NodeMCU board for simplicity of micro USB power already onboard but you could use any ESP for this project and it should work.

So I started searching how to cobble them together and I found https://www.reddit.com/r/esp8266/comments/5f8x8t/mqtt_and_neopixels_with_the_arduino_ide/

Which led me to https://github.com/joshhodgson/ESPNeopixelMQTTDriver… which led me to here https://goo.gl/KdtWUz.

This was perfect. I took the ESP8266 and connected it via MQTT to subscribe to a topic for changing the colors of a WS2812 (neopixel). All you do is send RBGW code (255000000000 is red for example) via the topic.

The code works great, after changing the topics and such. But its not up to my liking. So here is my re-coded version. I basically made it easily editable, add all the variables to the top.

Now I can slap an ESP and the neopixel in something for notification. I just have to remember what each color means and I will let Node-Red send the changes when needed. Fucking awesome. I can use this for temperature, rain, mail delivery, change the color if someone has ever pressed the doorbell that day…its endless. Only downfall is one alert overrides the previous color (is that really a downfall?) so the alert is “over-written”. So if you are going to use it for say timing on something or modes of the day or what have you, single project use, then it should fit the bill.

I happened to have to have a 3D printer and came across a really nice model of a lamp (Bioh Lamp) that I decided would work perfect as a notifier. After I made some modifications and added NodeMCU standoffs it worked perfectly. Don’t get me wrong it took a few tries to get the spacing right and I tried a few approaches before using the NodeMCU so the older standoff for centering the WS2812 is still there. Unfortunately the author has is locked up pretty tight and used the Creative Commons – Attribution – Non-Commercial – No Derivatives license so I cannot share it.

I used an old Apple iPod USB cable and chopped it up wired it to the boards. Also repurposed an old iPhone charger to use as the power supply. Perfect!

 

Code below.

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My OctoPrint (nightmare) Setup

octoPrint

While I was digging around for 3D printer stuff I came across OctoPrint (and OctoPi). OctoPrint acts as a print server for your printer. So you don’t have to do the SD card shuffle anymore, or waste a power hungry x86 for the task. My printer is not in the same room as my computers so this works a treat. Also, it allows you to monitor the entire process. It also supports a camera to watch the build. Perfect, I have a RPi camera available. I also found a tutorial to allow OctoPrint to support turning relays off and on to control other stuff (lights, the printer itself, etc…).

(Stay with me, this post is a little erratic)

I followed this and it helped me a lot: http://www.joemiketerranella.com/post/158553998358/octoprint4

If you have a cheap eBay Raspberry Pi LCD module you will most likely need to go here http://www.waveshare.com/wiki/3.5inch_RPi_LCD_(A)

For my 3.5″ Inch “RPi LCD” I needed this: wget http://www.waveshare.com/w/upload/7/74/LCD-show-170309.tar.gz sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade  (needed to get 109mb)

Install the driver and it toggles the mode to LCD display: Note: The Raspberry Pi must be connected to the network, or else the touch won’t work properly for some reason.

Your screen should pop on to show the command line, I also got booted from my SSH session, closed by remote host – as the Pi rebooted.

The OctoPi images runs off Jessie Lite, so there is no GUI which fucking sucks, so we need to install one.

Install lightdm (needed 222mb in downloads)

sudo apt-get install lightdm sudo raspi-config

Boot Options > boot go desktop and login as ‘pi’.

Fuck didn’t work.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=133691

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xserver-xorg sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends xinit sudo apt-get install raspberrypi-ui-mods  (needed to get 140mb, 315mb used…Jesus…)

try again to…

sudo apt-get install lightdm

startx without lightdm

no go… Fuck.

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/43847/startx-command-not-found

[/crayon] startx……ok? tossed errors. Lets reboot. pixman.

./scripts/install-desktop  …. didn’t work either.

Black screen and cursor… ugh damn it all. Nothing but fucking grief… Damn you Jessie Lite, and damn you for removing the GUI guts, and while I’m at it damn you OctoPrint for not having the GUI shit either…

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wiki/Setup-on-a-Raspberry-Pi-running-Raspbian

Use the image that works with the screen, that i still have or ? Well the image is Wheezy so shit, nope. Lets try a new install of Raspbian on a SD card, then add the video driver. Will we get a desktop?

So Jessie (full) and lets try the newest drivers for the screen this time?

I finally got it fucking working, and I am not happy that it took this long, and I am not happy with the unit as a whole. Most likely because I m using an RPiB2 maybe? I have also tried a RPiB and that was soooo fucking slow… to the point it was unusable with a touch screen. Might have been ok for just the OctoPrint server but I didn’t even try it I switched back to the B2 immediately.

So… load the OctoPi image (Jessie lite bastards) and once that is done, do the LCD show bullshit… it should reboot and give you a desktop…

Now the god damn camera wont work…I tried the B no go, tried the B2 no go. Tried the B2 again wtf? Oh maybe I should enable the camera via raspi-config?….wtf no where does it mention that, not anywhere… after i found a forum post saying to enable the camera it finally fucking worked…wtf guys.

Now another fucking problem… the browser. Chromium wont load, requires a kernel upgrade or some bullshit… dude wtf, I just downloaded your “complete” image. Complete my ass, I have to do extra shit then it ain’t fucking complete. Epiphany works but no supports for kiosk mode. Jesus…

Is this fucking worth it??

On top of that I hear transferring files via wifi to the SD card is horribly slow. Most people seem to just stick to using the SD card and use the screen on the printer… all for touch control and a camera…gah.

Three fucking days….solid days so far… trying to get this bullshit working.

So to get chromium to work I had to upgrade the kernel, rpi update….

Which broke the fucking LCD screen….fuck this shit. I give up. I’m going back to square one. reflashing the SD card with OctoPi (Jessie lite) enabling the camera and leaving it as is..no touch screen.

I feel depressed now, and lost three days of my life. Dont make the same mistake… or buy an official RPi screen and a new RPi 3. I would actually recommend a 7″, as the 3.5 is way too small. It doesn’t even fill the whole screen.

 

(Update: this shit was a pain in my ass. I turned out just flashing a straight copy of OctoPi to the card and running it as is. And to correct my mi-information, OctoPrint allows you to transfer files to the Pi or the printer SD card. Going to the Pi is fast, the printers SD card is where it takes FOREVER. Just don’t do it.)