by orcinus » Thu Jan 24, 2013 8:11 pm
I've received my beta Smoothie the other day.
Haven't hooked it up to anything yet, partly due to work and partly because i can't find any suitable 3.5mm pitch screw terminals (the only ones i have in my parts drawers are low current, and there isn't a single 3.5mm pitch terminal in any of the local shops, so i had to order some).
In case anyone's interested in it, ask away and i'll answer whatever i can.
First impressions:
- nice compact package
- plenty of pins brought out
- placement of some pins is a bit of a pain - reordering some of the connectors might've been a good idea
- 3.5mm pitch holes for "heavy" loads is a very very bad idea (3.5mm terminals that can take >10A are rare)
Nice things:
- flashing and configuration is a breeze (you just drag and drop a file onto mass storage and reboot)
- EVERYTHING is reconfigurable on the fly
- dual COM ports and both are fully usable at the same time, alongside the mass storage
- i dig the Smoothie firmware's modularity - it's a really awesome way to organize and expand the firmware
- faux-unix commands available through COM ports, along with the G commands
- you can power the "big" MOSFETs, the "little" MOSFETs, the electronics and the servos all separately or all from one feed or any of the combinations
- ethernet (currently unused, but opens the possibility of having a web interface to your printer)
- 4 thermistor ADC inputs, 2 small MOSFET outputs, 2 big MOSFET outputs, pretty much every pin broken out somewhere (including the LEDs)
Not so nice things:
- the aforementioned placement of some of the pins and 3.5mm pitch terminals for MOSFET outputs
- 4 drivers only, you need to hook up an external 5th driver for a secondary extruder (there's a header provided)*
* apparently, a 5-axis version is in the works