Just an update on what has been going on the last few months for those who are following along…

In the new features list for Smoothieware there has been what I consider a major step forward. Wolfmanjm has made the M4 core available, still very new, lightly tested and mostly undocumented and requires use of FORTH code to communicate but from what he has explained it is quite useful.

Things like scripting probing routines are now easily handled by the M4 core. So instead of needing a host to run scripts or macros it is now possible to run them directly onboard. Now combine this with the switch module and you have the ability to run canned routines with a button press…as an example.

More info on the M4 FORTH is here: FORTH info

Next, Arthur has done a major revision of smoothieware.org and the wiki. It now has V1 and V2 options at the top right. This is fairly new and we have not had a good chance to review the AI driven conversion, so beware that many of the pages have incorrect info on them. This is the manual step that we have to take reviewing the pages individually…but it beats rewriting them all I suppose.

If anyone finds errors please report the issue to one of the devs or via github. The info to the wiki is all here: Smoothieware Documentation Repo

I really like how the structure turned out and am happy that the info is mostly transferred over…it is also nice that the info is in a repository and not dependent on private hosting as it was before. There is still a lot of work to do but it is moving along.

Last thing I want to announce is that I completed work on a new version of the V2 Smoothieboard.
The V2 Core. Repo

This version of the board uses the same digital section and 5v regulator but removes the stepper drivers and some of the higher power FETs. This also combines the power input to a single header.

The point of the board is to be able to setup machines which are exclusively external drivers or breakout boards. This makes the footprint slightly smaller, cost lower and makes more expansion possible. The pins normally used for the stepper drivers are now used for the expansion header, this pinout matches Kliment’s “motordriver” board which is in the V2 repo and will allow for other boards to be designed that can plug directly in for various setups.

In the expansion board realm I have designed several new boards that are in my repo: CCecil’s repo

2 of which I ordered PCBs for the first is the 6 axis breakout and the second is the Bidirectional level shifter . We will be producing these in house and they will be available soon at robosprout.com.
Feel free to respond if you would like to see other expansion boards produced. Demand encourages production scheduling.

I plan some blog posts detailing all of these things in detail along with more changes and updates which I may have forgotten. More info to come.

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