Where is the quick start guide for this board???
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Well, I had nothing but embarrassment ever since this board arrived. Not really sure what all this hype is about. The main problem is the lack of any documentation apparently. Despite the great effort you guys made writing literally million words, the proper documentation simply does not exist. Every time I try to find something actually useful in setting up your hardware, I only find some useless gibberish there unrelated to actual setup. I built my own CNC machine and a COREXY 3D printer in the past, so no, I am not a total noob. And yes, I know how proper documentation should look like. This is by far the most poorly documented DIY board that I have ever purchased. Now I am struggling to find such simple thing as HOW TO CONNECT THIS THING TO WIFI NETWORK??? I mean, am I really asking for too much? A simple guide? $360 asking price and now I have to sit weeks scratching my head about how to make the damn thing do a simple wifi connection?
I paid over $360 for this hardware, I think the minimum I deserve from your company is proper documentation and support. The production cost of this hardware is under $70 and you ask for $360 which I paid. At such a great profit margin, wouldn't it be fair to at least work on some simple support documentation? I am not gonna ask you for the interface to look good, this is probably not gonna happen. But can you at least explain clearly WHAT you created and how to make it work? Tired of digging in your documentation page that only reminds me of a junk yard, with a hell ton of everything, but actually nothing useful.
The board cost alone is close to what basic laptop would cost and I do not expect that I have to finish the development of this myself, because it if your job, not mine. By offering product on a market you bare a responsibility of offering something that works as you describe on your page. So far, there is weeks of hard and not-fun work with this half-assed product between a paperweight that lies in front of me and an actual working 32bit board that can control a 3D printer. Not cool guys, NOT COOL. Over a year of market presence and sales and "we are working on producing a user guide". I think this is insane.
$100 screen can do nothing but control it's own brightness and the baud rate of connection to the main board. Apparently you do not need to offer a 7in option, because there is no use to it, there is no user interface. Why would anyone want to stare at ugly big screen? Can't comment on smaller versions, but 7in has a truly ugly interface and I am not sure who would want to see this on their expensive machine. You want to sell expensive things, which market CAN buy, but have no idea what it takes. Apparently you do not even understand that you have to invest a little into UI development for this product. Not sure who in a healthy mind would accept such ugly not convenient interface (if it can be called that) for the price that you are asking for it. At this price range your customers are no longer people with low income and low standards. And the price has to match the value.
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There is this link on top of that page here, it says 'Documentation'. If you search for 'Wifi' you'll find a link to that page here: https://www.duet3d.com/wiki/Getting_connected_to_the_Duet_WiFi - the title literaly answers the question you highlighted in your post…
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There is this link on top of that page here, it says 'Documentation'. If you search for 'Wifi' you'll find a link to that page here: https://www.duet3d.com/wiki/Getting_connected_to_the_Duet_WiFi - the title literaly answers the question you highlighted in your post…
Thank you for this link. Not sure how you managed to find it in that garbage pile. So, apparently I have to finish their programming myself by setting up WiFi connection using some crazy dedicated programming commands, because they did not create a simple UI that doesn't really take a lot of brain to do.
I am speechless how something in this condition can be offered on a market as a finished product…
I will be waiting for chinese Makerbase to offer their controller boards at half price and with fully designed UI and an actual working product. I already have their 7inch touch screen that works on android, gonna need to make it work with this half-assed board somehow until they finish their 32bit board development that supports what I need. That screens retails for $120, but it's an actual android PC with live print preview and all other cool stuff. And with DUET you pay $100 and get some garbage with no UI and that is even defective by design. Talking about Chinese bad quality - I had an opposite experience many times, this time included. -
This is to connect to WiFi?
You gotta be f-ing kidding me….
No wonder documentation is a mess, product is a mess too apparently.If you are running Windows, follow this link https://github.com/dc42/RepRapFirmware/blob/dev/Driver/DuetDriverFiles.zip and then press the Download button to download the device driver zip to your PC. Unzip the two files (duet.inf and duetinf.cat) to a local folder on your PC.
Connect your Duet a PC to your using the USB cable supplied.
If you are running Windows, open Device Manager and locate the device that corresponds to the Duet. It will show up as either "USB Serial Device" in the Ports (COM & LPT) section, or as Unknown Device. Right-click on it, select Update Driver, and browse to the folder containing the two driver files.
Load a terminal emulator program on your PC and use it to connect to the Duet. For Windows users we suggest YAT, https://sourceforge.net/projects/y-a-terminal/. The baud rate doesn't matter. The reason for using a terminal emulator instead of a 3D printer host program is to prevent the characters in your network password getting converted to uppercase.
Send the following command to start the WiFi module so that it can accept a programming command:M552 S0
Wait until you get the "WiFi module is idle" reply.
Send the following command to store your access point parameters in the WiFi module:
M587 S"your-network-ssid" P"your-network-password"
You can optionally supply an IP and gateway address as well, see G-code#M587:_Add_WiFi_host_network_to_remembered_list.2C_or_list_remembered_networks.
Send command M587 to verify that your SSID has been stored.
You can set up connection to additional access points in the same way if you wish.
Send M552 S1 to connect to the access point. If you have configured multiple access points and more than one is in range, the Duet will connect to the strongest one.
After a few seconds, it should confirm connection and give you the IP address. Alternatively, send M552 with no parameters to retrieve the network status and IP address.
Enter that IP address in the browser address bar on your PC, tablet or smartphone to connect.
Use the System Files Editor in the web interface to remove the leading ';' character in the M552 command in config.g so that the Duet WiFi will connect automatically in future. -
Congratulations! You win the "troll of the day" prize.
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Congratulations! You win the "troll of the day" prize.
Not trying to troll man, this seriously sucks. I design products for market too and I would kill myself if I give a birth to something this incomplete. This is a Frankenstein.
And tell me why I am not surprised, but after following their steps, terminal just wont return anything. Simply does not work. Returns ok <lf>to whatever I send to it. Sweet.</lf>
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Okay, codes in the instructions are wrong (not surprised again), this is why I did not receive "wifi idle" message. Connection is stored but it won't connect. That simple, without any reason why.
ok<lf>WiFi reported error: no known networks found<lf>Wifi module is idle</lf></lf>
not surprised…
Okay, it doesn't support hiddent networks. Need to broadcast my SSID now in order to use this. Fine.
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Yes it does support hidden networks. Use M587 with no parameters to verify that the stored SSID is correct. SSIDs are case-sensitive. In 1.20 series firmware, you can use S parameter on the M552 command to force a particular network to be chosen.
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Our posts crossed. You need to use the S parameter in the M552 command to select a hidden network.
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Our posts crossed. You need to use the S parameter in the M552 command to select a hidden network.
Thank you for sharing this directly, but it would be much nicer to see such things once in your user guide.
I am having a ton of problems now with the board, mainly due to the lack of documentation.
I have already started the web server. Can't figure out how to test stepper drivers now, without everything else having to be connected.
Gonna google for gcode help. -
Hi Vlad, I have a very non-technical artist-background speaking as an illustrator. For me, I found it quite easy to set up with a delta printer of own built. Provided, I did take good time to read through the documentation a couple of times as this was my first 3d printer project.
I can understand how different people have background and experience that change perception of what is expected from the documentation in order to set these things up, so to this point Vlad, perhaps you can share some constructive feedback of how you expect the documentation to read. How could it be more helpful to you? Would it be better with more visual input or videos showing setup? For instance, I noticed the newer setup by E3D to document their hotends with schematics and a step by step pictures/videos which I thought was pretty good. Provide some links to what you like and try to explain why you like them.
For my part, people here have been friendly and helpful when asking for help. With a bit of effort and constructive feedback I am sure it can only become better.
L
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If reading 4 pages of text becomes impossible for modern engineers, I fear for the futur of my kids!
I can understand that the Duet documentation does not match the documentations you usually read, and it can be disturbing. But you can't say there is no usefull information at all! I myself had to ask on forum to clarify a few points when I setup my Duet, but I found most of the instructions on the wiki. And I often read it to retreive what I need.
Again, the wiki can be improved, and users where asked how it could be: https://www.duet3d.com/forum/thread.php?id=2853
Feel free to add input
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Hi Vlad,
I can only share from my experience. From setup, I went to this site, clicked on Documentation and searched for wifi. First link provides step by step for what firmware is needed which was not difficult for me. I understand the board to be rather good, perhaps expensive for some, however there is no language barrier to asking questions on forum when I got stuck, which was with operations of the printer, not the setup/firmware part. Perhaps it is just my logic that is in harmony with what is being provided. Again, please provide links to products and documentation that you felt was excellent and point out the features you liked. Perhaps this can improve and help for next users of similar background to yourself. I would like to help out. -
We're working on some step-by-step guides, but they are not ready for publication yet.
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Documentation is easy when you have a basic product that has maybe one firmware update every 6 to 12 months. What we have here is an advanced product, the features of which are driven by end user requests. The developers make every effort to instigate these user requests. As a result, the functionality of the board is continuously being added to and there are multiple firmware updates on a monthly, sometimes weekly, basis. This isn't the developers fault - it's us users requesting all these additions. Naturally the documentation may lag behind or become fragmented in such a fast moving environment.
Maybe the answer is to stop all future development and ignore the list of feature requests, in order to get the documentation in a format that small children can understand. This will no doubt lead to numerous rants from other users who will be throwing their toys around saying "bu**er the documentation, I just want this "xxxxx" feature and I want it now!". The developers are treading a fine line in order too keep everyone happy.
Personally I don't mind having to spend a minute or two finding a particular piece of information when I can ask for CoreXYUV kinematics, or firmware retraction of multiple filaments simultaneously, and have that implemented in a matter of hours!
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So this will probably get me flamed but …
I recently built a CoreXY and had no experience at all with 3D printers but was able to follow the wiki and ask questions in the forum and was able to get the Wifi working without much hassel.
and specifically the wireless connectivity
https://www.duet3d.com/wiki/Getting_connected_to_the_Duet_WiFi
Maybe its the gCode your struggling with? It also sounds to me like you bought something that you couldn't afford based on how many times you've repeated how much you spent.. we all paid a premium price for a premium product.
Since you're now invested in the product I would probably change the negative attitude and approach things from a more positive side if you expect forum users to help you iron out the problems you're having. Also, I would keep in mind this is a "Family" business and probably nothing like those big companies that you deal with all the time in your engineering world.
just my two cents… have a Merry Christmas!
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Hi Vlad,
I found the documentation easy enough, sure it's not a toaster it's semi-pro/pro 3d printer controller. A great deal of time and money has been spent making this board do the job it should do, print stuff really well.
Compare it to marlins documentation or smoothieware and it doesn't look bad at all.
This forum is one of the friendliest and most helpful in 3d printing. Can you name another product you can buy which is not only the best in its class but where the lead developer personally answers the support questions and modifies future release to help you,happily,quickly and helpfully? You've arrived shouting a hail of criticism, and been met with calm polite suggestions, most other forums would have used much more colourful language.
You are at the bottom of a steep learning curve but once you reach the middle or the top you'll quite likely look back at this time and wonder what the fuss was all about. Why not offer to help you have some experience and a useful outside perspective to bring to it?
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"Cant find the documentation, this sucks"
"Ok, i find it"
"The documentation dont have a youtube tutorial, this sucks" -
A YouTube tutorial would be good. I'll make one if I get chance.
