RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements

jay_s_uk

Is the spreadsheet in the first post still being maintained?
Does the equivalent exist for 3.3?

dc42

@jay_s_uk said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

Is the spreadsheet in the first post still being maintained?
Does the equivalent exist for 3.3?

Many of the items that were planned for 3.2 have been deferred to 3.3. You can see what's implemented in 3.2 in the RRF3 whatsnew file.

A Former User

@dc42 said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

Many of the items that were planned for 3.2 have been deferred to 3.3. You can see what's implemented in 3.2 in the RRF3 whatsnew file.

why the continual push back ?

dc42

It's hardly a continual push back. The 3.2 release includes nearly 40 improvements, not counting bug fixes.

A Former User

@dc42 said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

It's hardly a continual push back. The 3.2 release includes nearly 40 improvements, not counting bug fixes.

let me re-phrase then : why the push back ?

Phaedrux

@CaLviNx Market conditions?

A Former User

@Phaedrux said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

@CaLviNx Market conditions?

which means what exactly ?

I think there is more than a few users waiting on functionality fixes (which in my opinion should have be a priority) which would allow the correct use of pre-purchased equipment to be used/maintained properly/easily

Phaedrux

In short, there is a global shortage of 2660 drivers used in the duet 2 (turns out they are used in ventilators) and the Maestro is discontinued, so work on the mini5+ was pulled forward.

3.2 beta is in the works, so things are coming. We all appreciate the patience.

jens55

Could we gat a URL that lists the likely changes for 3.2?
I know DC42 said "You can see what's implemented in 3.2 in the RRF3 whatsnew file." but I have not been able to find that file ....

oozeBot

@jens55

https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/commit/ed1bb2a1924fea6308ee024d4142ed243d6358cb

0

dc42 committed to Duet3D/RepRapFirmware

Update WHATS_NEW_RRF3.md

deckingman

Two questions.

From the 3.2. planned improvements link it says - quote

"[Duet 3 expansion and tool boards] Increased performance, in particular the maximum step rate is higher than before"

I'm a bit fed up of asking the question because I've asked it multiple time over the last 12 months and never yet had an answer but I'll try one more time so here goes.....

Question 1. What is the maximum step pulse frequency for expansion and tool boards now, and what will it be?

There remains a long list of limitations for expansion boards which I have been trying to use for over a year. https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_3_firmware_configuration_limitations

Some of the fixes have been pushed back to being planned for release 3.3.0 now while some don't have any planned release number assigned to them. So .....

Question 2. What is the likely release date for 3.3.0 and for those items on the list of limitations which are not planned to be fixed in 3.3.0, is there any plan to fix them and if so when, or will they be permanent limitations?

A Former User

@Phaedrux said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

3.2 beta is in the works, so things are coming. We all appreciate the patience.

do people have a lot of choice ?

A Former User

Looking at the link

Firmware Limitations

I notice it is always very quickly updated with the firmware revision number in which you advise they will be rectified

The cynical among us would say maybe its time to remove the number to save yourselves the extra work of having to update that number on such a regular basis...

Phaedrux

@CaLviNx said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

do people have a lot of choice ?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OwenD

Whilst I'm disappointed that my Wishlist items ( variables & multi-choice messages boxes) aren't in the mix for 3.2, we need to remember a few things.

We all purchased the boards based on the functionality as at that day, and anything further is a bonus
The vendor has to make a living in order to continue development, so sometimes that's going to alter the development path.
The firmware is open source, so there's plenty of scope for people to help development if there's something that's critical to them. If it's critical to your business, then hire a programmer.
Even this forum has a cost to the vendor

Everyone has the right to ask about promised features and especially bug fixes, but the above are the cold hard facts.

Nuramori

@OwenD

I believe your sentiments are accurate and warranted, though whether it’s my fault for not seeing the fine print - if I was more aware of some of the limitations of the tool board (the ones I am most concerned with) I may not have immediately designed a hotend around it until they were part of the firmware. When I went to buy it (actually the second one, since there’s been an improvement since I bought the first) the vendor’s page didn’t have a link or any reference to the limitations of the hardware/firmware. I don’t think that would a stretch to ask that such links be required of authorized vendors. The lack of pid tuning via the tool board is a pain, even with workarounds. Now watching 3.2 make its beta rounds before even getting to a 3.3 beta is going to be a bit painful.

I don’t fault the development team, it is what it is - I’d be curious what items would be more important to people if the user base were polled.

arhi

@Nuramori said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

if the user base were polled

to be clear, I don't mind things as they are right now, I love that "planned" document exist, that's updated so we know what's going on, as for the pace and what's actually on the list and how it is put there I have confidence that it's done the best way possible with way more input than I have... I just want to comment on the "user base were polled" thing.

Altium was a great tool, most of it's original popularity came as it came as continuation of some of the best tools on the parket (p-cad, protel...) but then the owners got some crazy ideas and invested a huge amount of resources (human, time, money...) in to those ideas. Huge % of the user base did not care about that and Altium lost the huge chunk of the market, spent huge amount of resources in designing things noone wanted and they let the main product get stale... After some years of that they came to idea to create a "voting system", every paid customer have certain number of points and can vote for features. Features with highest number of points are worked on irrelevant to what "management" think is important. This brought Altium back to being one of the most influential and most used professional EDA tools out there.

Of course, not a fair comparison, the number of users, type of users etc. is very different. Size of the product too. That's why I believe the "management" of the Duet ecosystem probbly have all the info they need to know where to focus, but yes, pooling is a nice and open way to handle stuff... the only difference is, my "vote" as a person with 3 duet boards can't be the same as a "vote" of a company that's purchasing 100 boards a month and if they need a feature it's understandably more important than some convenient feature I'd like to have I'm sure we can agree.

deckingman

@OwenD All good points. On the other hand, some of us were very early adopters. In my case, one of the main driving forces for that early adoption was for the Duet guys benefit. - so that they could use my machine to demonstrate their hardware at the TCT show. At that time, no list of limitations existed. One's natural expectation is that a later generation product would have features over and above what a previous generation product would have. Yet here I am over 14 months since I converted my machine and I still don't have the basic functionality that my Duet 2 used to have. Furthermore, we are still on 3.1 with 3.2 being planned soon but basic things like tuning heaters have been pushed back to 3.3. So on that basis, it could be another year or more before I get that basic functionality back. I'm sorry to say that I used to be a huge fan and spent weeks of my own time supporting Duet on their trade stands, but now that no more trade shows are planned, my usefulness to them is over so they have to thrown me under a bus. That's how I feel.

T3P3Tony

I absolutely get the frustration of seeing important features being delayed from 3.2 to 3.3 (and especially in @deckingman case, features similar to ones you used on Duet 2 that have been pending for a while). We don't make these decisions lightly.

During the update from 3.0 to 3.1 we had quite a drawn out period of betas and RCs -it was clear the release process needed to be improved. You will have seen that in 3.1.1 where RRF, DSF and DWC are now on the same firmware build versions, released at the same time. The key change was to reduce the time between releases, which necessarily reduced how many new features are on each release.

We have a finite amount of software development time. That said, certain things that members of this community already do absolutely help maximise what we can achieve, things like:

Testing beta builds and reporting issues, especially on a wide variety of machines.
Helping new users with issues.
Contributing bug fixes and features.
Posting examples of your machines and projects that show all of the many types of configurations using RRF.
All the other activity that makes this a good place to interact and learn.

wilriker

@deckingman said in RepRapFirmware 3.2 planned improvements:

Question 1. What is the maximum step pulse frequency for expansion and tool boards now, and what will it be?

I can only answer that for the tool board here. When it started it used to be as low as 10-12kHz. A first improvement increased this to a still low 20kHz. Latest firmware increased it to around 110kHz.