Friday, December 21, 2012

If your brainwave's got no brains, or your board is hiding from windows.

Come in and get your boards flashed, the Brainwaves can talk to both Mac and Windows, or just come in to work on the Build.

Brainwave Board Wiring Diagram


Requirements For Mac and Windows

1) Install Arduino 1.0.2
2) install the brainwave-arduino bundle from
https://github.com/unrepentantgeek/brainwave-arduino
3) Download this branch of Marlin:
https://github.com/unrepentantgeek/Marlin/tree/brainwave

The brainwave folder needs to be in Arduino right click it (control click for macs) for show package contents.  Store brainwave folder in the hardware folder be sure to take the Brainwave file out of the first folder it has trouble seeing out side itself.



Walkthrough (Mac & Windows)

In Ardiuno 1.0.2 set your board. Tools => Board => Brainwave (see image).

Hook the board up to the computer with the tinyUSB press program.
In Tools => serial port the board should be recognized as a COM PORT# (PC) tty.usb modem131 (Mac) select that.

In the sketch open Marlin.pde (I stored this file in firmware in the Brainwave folder so I wouldn't lose it) this will be converted to Marlin.ino afterwards

Set Motherboard to 82  (found in Configuration.h)
Click Verify sketch (check mark symbol)

If there are no error messages 
Click compile (arrow symbol)

It should write the firmware directly to your board. To confirm with open Pronterface set the Baudrate: 115200 and see if you can driver the bot around. Motors should spin heaters should warm up, and temperature readings should be accurate.

Pronterface & Slicer
If you haven't installed pronterface or slicer, you will need to. Printrbot.com has the best walkthrough (link below) I strongly suggest you read through the through entire PDF to ease the calibration. (I frequently reference pages 1 and 4 for beginners)

http://printrbot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Printrbot-Getting-Started-Guide2.pdf

or the individual links:
Pronterface       http://koti.kapsi.fi/~kliment/printrun/ 
Slic3r                 http://slic3r.org/



Never unplug a stepper motor when the board is on, otherwise you'll get a demo of how to replace a fried driver. (I stand corrected Mr. Wilson)


If you have a PC the COM PORT will disappear after the board has been flashed with the correct firmware. In the brainwave Arduino Folder there is a Brainwave.INF file this will allow you board to talk to computer as a COM PORT.



Windows COM Port  .INF Walkthrough.

"How to  find the Brainwave COM PORT in Windows XP (this also works for Windows 7)"













Open Pronterface, make sure it connect and test the bots ability to move heat, call temps and extrude.

If you are still having trouble connecting to the board via Pronterface, restart the computer and try to connect to Pronterface again. If Pronterface still can't connect, right click "My Computer" select properties and  make sure to check the hardware for COM# (click properties is set to the Baudrate to 115200, sometimes it will default to something silly like 9600.

Good Luck

~Bowman

2 comments:

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  2. Hi. I really need help with this board. I am going to buy this board soon but the only problem is I can't figure out all the software stuff. I have downloaded the latest version of arduino and slic3r on my Mac which is currently running OSX Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I know i'm suppose to install this 'Marlin' thing onto the board and some brainwave arduino thing into arduino but i can't even figure out how to use github. The arduino-brainwave file on github is super confusing. I don't know which one to copy because it says Windows driver. Then for Marlin all there is on the site is same like the arduino-brainwave thing. All just a bunch of files. I also don't know how to install pronterface. Finally, I can't find my 'Hardware' directory in arduino. I am currently running arduino 1.0.4.
    Any help is appreciated. Many thanks.

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