Identifying my main board

Mayhem

Is there a simple way to ID my main board?

My CR-10 has been offline for a while whilst I waited on a MicroSwiss direct drive unit to make its way uour of the US (my stock hot end died). When I finished I went on Tim's site to check if there was an updated firmware and noticed that the latest references a certain board.

One of the first mods I did after flashing the board was to install a key switch across the jumper terminals on the board, so I can flash the board without having to open the case.

I don't want to try and flash the wrong firmware and screw things up!

HouseOfBugs

Post a picture of it.

Mayhem

Thanks Tim, will do later (at work now). I was kind of hoping there would be some command in some software that would get my printer to spit out the info 🤓

Mayhem

Here is the main board:

The plug on the USB jumper pins goes to a external switch, so I can flash the EEPROM without having to open up the box.

HouseOfBugs

Mayhem

That would be the Creality "V1" "Melzi" board. It works with all the "Melzi" firmwares.

Mayhem

Thanks Tim. I'm using your Unified 1 firmware and wanted to check before I tried the Unified 2 firmware. However, knowing that I have a V1 board, I'll stick with U1.

HouseOfBugs

Mayhem

You can use this one: https://www.th3dstudio.com/hc/downloads/unified-2-firmware/creality/creality-cr-10-mini-s4-s5-ender-2-ender-3-ender-5-firmware-melzi-v1-1-x-board/

Mayhem

Thanks Tim, I wasn't sure if I could but will give it a try over the weekend. This initially put me off:

"Due to the design of the Creality boards (aka the Silent ones) with TMC drivers Linear Advance will probably not work correctly. The feature is available but use at your own risk."

I feel more confident not that you have said it will work!

Mayhem

Hi Tim, I've followed the instructions for installing VSCode and Platform IO. I've made the necessary changes to configuration.h and successfully compiled the firmware. However, when I try to flash to board, I get the following error:

My printer is the device and disconnecting it confirms that it is indeed on COM 4:

I went back and unistalled Platform IO and made sure I had the latest version of Python and tried again, with the same result.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

HouseOfBugs

Close your slicer.

Mayhem

Slicer wasn't open. Only programs running were VSCode and Windows Explorer. Tried after a reboot as well and same result.

HouseOfBugs

Something is tying up the COM port or you have the wrong COM port selected.

Mayhem

Hi Tim, Thanks and I do appreciate your time in responding.

I confirmed that the printer is COM4 (no other USB devices plugged in besides keyboard and mouse) and unplugging the printer removes COM4 from both the device manager and the devices tab under PIO Home.

No other programs are open (checked in task manager), so I cannot see anything obvious that may be accessing COM4. However, I also know that I don't know enough about this to say categorically that this is the case. I looked for any services running under the properties for COM4 in device manager but services didn't appear in the dropdown list.

I have even tried doing a complete uninstall of VSCode and the PlatformIO plugin, and then going through the installation steps again. I rebooted the computer after each step.

My next approach will be to reinstall Win 10, which isn't all that work, as this is a computer in my workshop which doesn't have much on it in the way of software and all my data is on a separate HDD. I tried a restore point but only one was listed and it failed to restore 🤦

Edit:

I've just followed the install procedure on my home PC and I noticed that it behaved slightly differently to my workshop PC. The main thing that I notice is the PlatformIO icon appears on my home machine but not my workshop once, despite both appearing to install correctly.

Home PC:

Workshop PC:

Mayhem

Restored Win 10 and after reinstalling VSC it opened with PlatformIO installed and with the icon showing. I compiled the firmware and successfully uploaded it to my printer. After calibrating the extruder and setting the z-offset (yes, in my excitement I forgot to write them down prior to resetting the EEPROM).

Clearly something was not happening correctly with PlatformIO installing, although I received nothing to suggest this was the case. Background processes perhaps? I don't know. Anyhow, I'm up and running and very happy.

HouseOfBugs

It may be that a step was skipped. This is the process I use for installing VSCode on my machines: https://www.th3dstudio.com/hc/guides/programs/vscode-setup-guide-for-unified-2-and-marlin-2-firmware/

Mayhem

That was what I followed on both my workshop PC and my home PC. The only difference was the icon not showing. Interestingly, after I did a reinstallation of XP (the remove apps but keep settings option) it worked perfectly on reinstallation.

Just glad to have my printer back running properly, dialled in and printing better than ever! Thanks for the help. Greatly appreciated.