Musings and Experiments on the Art and Science of 3D Printing

Followers

Browsing "Older Posts"

New RRF, DWC and IAP, oh my!

By SublimeLayers → Saturday, March 19, 2016
Much good news! Christian Hammacher has made a lot of changes to the firmware, Duet Web Control and his IAP to eliminate the web disconnect issues, improve reliability, etc. I've tested the new DWC and firmware and have not had a single disconnect in over 6 days on my two test machines! That's progress! The IAP is much more robust and reliable too.

You can get these latest releases from Christian's github
If you've been using the IAP to update firmware then you can do the complete update without USB, bossac or removing the CF card! Here's how, it's as easy as 1, 2, 3:

From Settings->General in DWC:
  1. upload the DWC zip file. Note, Mac OS X automatically unzips after downloading so you may have to recompress the root folder.
  2. upload the IAP
  3. upload RRF
There are a few feature differences between ch and dc42 firmwares (comparing the latest versions).
  • ch has G-code interleaving, which means you can run G-codes from any input source at the same time like PanelDue, Serial USB, code quay, file and macro. There is a G-codequeue that insures codes like M106 are executed in time. These features are useful for cooling bridges, etc.
  • the current ch has the most recent fixes for the disconnect issues that affected many users.
  • otherwise, the overall functionality is basically the same.
Note that the latest dc42 firmware also supports the IAP and DWC 1.11

Duet In-application firmware updates!

By SublimeLayers → Sunday, March 13, 2016
I've been testing some new firmware and Duet Web Control code developed by Christian Hammacher. I initially contacted him with some DWC connection issues and provided some network logs to help out. He's made great progress on eradicating the disconnects but this post is about the great feature he's developed along the way - in-application firmware updates.

What's this all about? Basically, iap.bin (the name of the new utility) runs on the Duet and allows users to upload new firmware binaries from the Web interface and installs them! No more bossac, no more command line stuff, no more USB needed. Once installed, iap.bin installs any RRF release, including dc42, right from the DWC Settings page. You can install iap.bin the first time via the web interface too (I think you need to be using the absolute latest DWC though for this to work, otherwise you can simply transfer the file to the CF card). I've been switching back and forth painlessly as Christian has worked on the disconnect stuff. It is implemented as the new M997 code and the gcode wiki page has some info on it.

On top of this, Christian has implemented in-place config.g editing in DWC and the ability to upload zip packages. For instance, you can use the zip uploading to upload all of the Duet Web Control files to update DWC.

Here's a screen shot of the in-place config.g editing:


These new features now allow almost complete "hands-off" configuring and firmware updates via the web interface with no need to remove the CF card or hook up a USB cable.

This just in, David Crocker has just released an updated dc42 firmware that includes Christian's iap.bin!