half-assed web UI update put printer down. Need help!

Vlad

Guys, can you ever produce one single update that is not half-assed?

Going to your page. Noticing there is a 2.0 for web control. Getting ZIP file, uploading it using browser, all looks good. Printer restarts. Printer down, loads CLEAR page! (it does load index.html, just exactly as it is with no modules working) No seriously, wtf @dc42 , how hard is to check a god damn update before releasing it? we all paid good money for this, we are not on a freebie site here. None of my other boards give me nearly as much trouble and downtime as yours! I assumed RC6 must have been tested at least once! Obviously I was wrong. How am I supposed to fix this unknown issue now? (no, I am not willing to reflash my board for you) I exactly followed the steps on your manual! You want me to do your work and fix your errors in your firmware now or what is your understanding to this fix? What do you expect when you release such half ass and users machines are now down due to that? You expect us to fix this ourselves now and dig for a possible cause why duet team could not do a simple beta testing?

codiac2600

RC means release candidate. Means that there may or may not be any bugs. As someone who does production printing I do not put release candidate or beta software on them.

DocCox

@vlad
Shame
Software's hard, and in this instance customer service looks to be way harder.
Its not a freebie forum - but you're probably not paying a subscription for software updates either. If you want exactly what you paid for you can always stick with the working version you already had.

Best of luck - I cant help with the update but I can give advice to resolve the biggest issue. Temper tantrums dont get you very far in life.

samlogan87

A couple of things @Vlad, one @dc42 doesnt write the web controller, it is done by someone else, and two jumping on the forum acting like an absolute tool is going to get you no where.

Now did you actually do what @Phaedrux suggested on the other page? This happened to me once and I did exactly as he suggested to you and within 15mins I was back up and running. The amount of people who readily update the firmware and the web controller and do not have issues suggests that it is you that may or may not have done something correctly not the web controller itself. Follow his instructions instead of throwing a tantrum and you may find it will be sorted.

Regards,
Sam

gnydick

@samlogan87 to be fair, I've brought up the improper release practices, but to no avail. That is specifically, he won't back port fixes. It's always "oh, yeah, that's fixed in the current beta/RC." And often it's not like they're trivial breakages. Show stoppers need to be back ported to the stable branch.

I've run into this multiple times. I've resolved myself to having to just grin and bear it and stick with broken "stable" releases because I'd rather align myself with the devil I know rather than the devil I don't.

Same thing goes for baby stepping. It's woefully implemented. It's overly complicated and only works under assumed conditions. If you're running a work in progress printer with manual tweaking and tuning needed while operating, baby steps will F you up quite well. Search for my posts on the matter.

Vlad

@samlogan87 I, of course, have done his suggestion, in fact, even before he suggested that, because that is covered in documentation. I would not go to this forum, unless documentation doesn't not offer a solution. I get pretty angry when I have to deal with half-assed products, that are the most expensive boards on a market with a great margin that should at least secure a proper manual and proper function for us. I have Chinese boards, from people who barely speak english, such as MKS, and their boards are 10x better documented and 10x more clear to setup. And when problem happens, it is 10x easier to find a solution. And did I mention their boards are 8x cheaper? And I am already stuck with this one, so I have to make it work.

chas2706

I think you need to calm down and look up the term "candidate release". You were not forced to upload it. It is there for testing by us if we choose. Let me know if you selling your duet board on the cheap!
P.S. Have you forgotten your anger management pills?

Vlad

@gnydick yeah, totally, I do not even raise some other problems here such as absolutely random and incorrect print progress and print time prediction which nobody fixes for a long time. But yeah, it's there, along with other bugs, that don't horribly bother me as long as machine functions. I also found some weird glitches where config file is not entirely being read and loaded at a first cold start and motor currents for example are not set to config file value but instead are taken from somewhere else with 1A for each motor. It's easy to check, but I simply have no time for these things. But on candidate #6 I assume my machine at least won't go down completely, to the point that I have to now factory reset everything to make it work.

I actually wanted to redo their UI completely using bootstrap template available, this is why I decided to update first. In my opinion, their UI is not optimised at all. There is a lot of useless info that takes most of the screen (at least for my liking), but there is no PRO tools available, such as for example: I use custom jerk and custom accel values depending on what I am printing to optimize print times. I also use custom pressure advance every time to optimize quality and speed. Relatively easy to do and I know exactly what I need over there, however, doing that simple thing with command line is not optimal and wastes a lot of time, on other hand I have half of my screen taken by things that are no use. Print speed is a bar instead of text field for some reason, same for extrusion multiplier. Lots of things, I just don't mention and plan to fix myself, but man, bringing printer down by uploading #6 release candidate is too much. I value my time, I prefer printing than messing with something that I already paid nearly $400 for. Should't this be done by DUET3D in a first place?

samlogan87

@gnydick to be honest if you are running release candidates you run the risk of having bugs. Whilst there is a lot of extra functionality added in the release candidates, I feel there are not too many issues with the released versions so people should stick to them. I know very well how frustrating programming bugs are with what I do at work so if I can be bothered upgrading to the latest rc, I do knowing I will roll back if I can’t be bothered dealing with it. I am however new to 3D printing, built my own custom core xy, have very little knowledge of in-depth programming and I don’t seem to have too many issues. I find it pretty straight forward to use and set up. My only tweaking has been to try and get my print bite sticking properly. I use baby stepping a lot and although it is fair to say that I don’t know what other printer controllers are like, I don’t have any issues with it and it’s operation, especially since the new web controller was released where you can actually hear it moving the build platform while the printer is stationary.

And to be honest I can’t change anything as I don’t have the skills to do it so I just deal with it. Throwing a tantrum like above is purely rude and not going to get anyone anywhere.

Regards
Sam

Vlad

@samlogan87 You don't run into issues for exact reason, because you don't change anything on the board. I am an advanced user, and I do change on this board a lot, I also have DUEx5 connected and other hardware. I spoke to David over a year ago and they informed me that they were working on a better manuals. Still not happening. All manuals are a complete mess located in bits and pieces all over internet, so user has to literally google it. I get it about RC versions, but #6 at least should not put printer down, don't you think?

chas2706

Question... How do you expect to get help after you abuse everyone and everything?

Vlad

@chas2706 If my customer is let down so badly by my product ever, for any reason (which never happened to me), he will come to me pretty upset and, being a professional, I will apologize for a mess and solve his issue. I do not expect any help from you, I expect a solution from DUET3D. And yes, I am a pissed customer, because my machine is down for no reason now. I paid money for expensive board, and I do not have to be super nice and apologetic. My first duet also failed out of warranty period, so don't tell me how to formulate my requests, would you? This boards are nothing but trouble always. I am bound to them due to DUEx5 functionality as I test complex hardware daily and need that.

chas2706

Then why upload "rc" software which is for testing. You keep saying you are an expert? Like I said if you selling your board cheep let me know.

Vlad

@chas2706 I don't care what you think about all this, at all. Let me know when you learn how to make money and stop bargaining for cheap boards. I don't sell my used hardware at all. I give it away to my followers. But you are not included lol.

I already rolled the board back to previous version, but the fact that update puts the printer down needs to be addressed. Such unexpected surprises should not be accepted by users as something normal. Since I want to build a custom UI, I do want to start from 2.0 foundation of course.

chas2706

Your attitude stinks, you don't deserve any help. I don't care what you think of me. I don't care about your "business". I just hope you treat your "customers" with respect. I'm done with this thread>

Vlad

@chas2706 thanks God. You was the most useless person here offering zero value at all, just meaningless chatter. And yes, every customer absolutely "deserves" a solution, you are obviously clueless about how businesses are run in the world.

Thank you all other guys for trying to help. I just ended up rolling everything back manually by editing folders on SD card to the previous state. I do hope someone from DUET3D can and will address this eventually on this thread.

dc42

@vlad, as others have said already, release candidates are there to be tested. Try them out on your own machines if you like, but be prepared to revert if you experience problems.

You need to be running main firmware 2.02 on the Duet for DWC 2.0 to work. On the Duet WiFi you should also be running DuetWiFiServer 1.22 or later (version 1.23 is current). The issues you had may be related to using an older version of DuetWiFiServer.

If you don't like aspects of the DWC interface, you are of course free to modify or rewrite it - that's the beauty of open source software. Another user has written an alternative UI and posted the details on this forum.

For the record, DWC is written and released by chrishamm, not me.

Vlad

@dc42 hi David. Here is what is already there.
Firmware Name: RepRapFirmware for Duet 2 WiFi/Ethernet
Firmware Electronics: Duet WiFi 1.02 or later
Firmware Version: 2.02(RTOS) (2018-12-24b1)
WiFi Server Version: 1.22
Web Interface Version: 1.22.5

Seems to me that everything is OK on this end. Totally understand about RC, but RC#6 taking printer down completely is unexpected, minor bugs are expected and fine of course. As I said I reverted already, but I still would like to use 2.0 for UI redesign purposes. I just reset everything on that side using "DuetWebControl-master" files which seems to have had me reverted back to 1.22.5. Before installing RC#6 I also have read the forum and nothing was giving me a warning sign. Gonna try to do that again now, not having fun at all.

Vlad

Ok guys, in case someone experiences the same issue, I want to document. Found solution myself as always.

This is what helped:

restored it back by deleting files on SD card from "www" folder and replacing them with "DuetWebControl-master" contents from github.
gained control over from web browser again and reloaded "DuetWebControl.zip" which worked.

P.S: for some reason the first file that I had was "DuetWebControl-2.0.0-RC6.zip" which is the one that caused issues. So make sure you download the "right" one that works. Not sure if this is the issue, but doesn't hurt to mention.

Vlad

Just to comment further on this update - UI looks MUCH better. Usability still extremely low, needed features are hard to reach and a lot of rarely needed stuff is always in front of eyes. Now to bad stuff - extremely unstable still, after each restart printer would totally lose connection until I power cycle it. This has to be looked into before a final release.