Did you have a look at Firmware?  

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Not really. I lost interest to contribute to the PR source code.

* Because of the appendix (loosing warranty).
* No good experience with the MK2/3 merge pull request process.
* My printer are doing their job and I'm not trying to fix a working machine

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Hi @nikolai-r,

thanks for response. Seems you are the first responding thought of some modifications. 

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

I do not look specifically inside the source code, I wish I was at that skill level to be able to program firmware. I just look occasionally at pull requests on GitHub and try to see what they do there, out of curiosity.

I am aware of the appendix, when the time comes and there will be some firmware modification that will be totally must-have, I will consider breaking it. 

Have you heard anything new about the developer program they wanted to establish for developing firmware on Buddy (and certainly future) boards while keeping some form of warranty? Josef was hinting something in one of live streams, that during summer they plan to ramp up firmware development and get this going too.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@crawlerin

I also heard about it , so we will see.

Unless you will develop on your own, for official signed releases there is no need to break the appendix. Even the beta and RC versions dedicated to more experienced users you can flash without breaking the appendix. But using them you have to be more careful.

Regarding any issues people can post their requests here on the forum or  generate several  request types on github and moderators are listening and doing their best to forward those requests into right hands.

There is a slightly difference between MK3 which is 8 bit technology and where the main development environment is Arduino while MINI is 32 bit technology written in C and C++ requiring a bit more, but you can learn about it on github - there is not a secret.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@zoltan

If you want to contribute code you need to test it first, and to test your own build you need to break the appendix?

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@abb

to flash your own code, which is no signed by Prusa, you really need to break the appendix. Do you have any ideas to implement something marvelous 😉 ?

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@zoltan

How does that not stifle contributions to the code base? The choice is help develop code vs. keep warranty?

No I do not have any current need to code anything, but it must be frustrating to those that do.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Posted by: @abb

[...] How does that not stifle contributions to the code base? The choice is help develop code vs. keep warranty?

It's a reasonable balance. Prusa is not preventing you from developing your own code, but is not going to provide warranty when you start making significant modifications to the printer. The Raspberry Pi foundation did the same thing with overclocking early on. You were free to overclock, but if you wanted to stress the hardware that way, it required popping a fuse indicating you had done so. 

I suspect most folks doing firmware mods are well outside warranty. I pretty well gave up any expectations of warranty service when I had to update firmware on my Sidewinder to get the stupid thing to print well. This approach more prevents the type who decide to flash without understanding what they're doing from attempting a warranty return when they screw it up.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@bobstro

Overclocking and flashing custom firmware is not really comparing like for like, even if both have risks involved. When you advertise an open-source product such as the mini, where both the hardware and software are freely available it is somewhat counter productive to require users to void their warranty to take full use of their machine. I get that from a business perspective it is a smart choice, but not at all in the spirit of community. By developing the firmware you are helping Prusa out, so why should you take a personal hit by limiting the warranty of your own machine?

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

I think this discussion is going into the wrong direction. I’ve a feeling zoltan is just offering a channel for feature requests for the MINI firmware here. So it can reach the developers faster. It kind of telling stories about github tickets, but anyway this is a nice offer.  

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Posted by: @abb

[...] Overclocking and flashing custom firmware is not really comparing like for like, even if both have risks involved.

 

When you advertise an open-source product such as the mini, where both the hardware and software are freely available it is somewhat counter productive to require users to void their warranty to take full use of their machine.

It's worth pointing out that loading unsigned firmware has always voided the warranty. The difference now is that users can't pretend they didn't when trying to get support.  

I get that from a business perspective it is a smart choice, but not at all in the spirit of community. By developing the firmware you are helping Prusa out, so why should you take a personal hit by limiting the warranty of your own machine?

I don't disagree with the spirit of keeping everything open and off-the-shelf. However, when a company like Prusa has to worry about things like liability that aren't covered by open source licensing, I can see why they have gone this way. They are not stopping anybody from doing anything, only from being able to claim they didn't. I think this is part of the industry growing up. Any time a 3D printer catches fire, it makes headlines. It sort of sucks, but it allows them to stay in business. Once you're paying bills, you've got to start thinking differently.

I like the Hackaday summary that covered this when the Mini was released. This sums it up nicely:

If Prusa wanted to prevent users from running alternate firmware entirely they could have done so (or at least tried to), but instead they’ve created a scenario that forces the prospective tinkerer to either back down or fully commit.

Having dealt with the joys of trying to update old, perfectly usable phones with locked firmware, I much prefer this approach! 

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@nikolai-r

I guess you are right. So my feature request would be that people can contact Prusa for the possiblity of contributing to the source code without it invalidating their warranty.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@bobstro

I have always felt that the best products emanate from communities where tinkerers are welcomed with open arms.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Posted by: @abb

[...] I have always felt that the best products emanate from communities where tinkerers are welcomed with open arms.

Anybody acting in that spirit isn't going to try to act like they didn't make mods. The tab just reinforces that.

There was a "3D printer fire" incident a couple of years ago that turned out to be due to modified firmware only after some investigation. Of course, the press never printed a correction. News like that can kill a company. Liability sucks.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Posted by: @zoltan

Hi,

did anybody try to look at the MINI Firmware from inside and thought about some nice tweaks?

Are you aware of the Buddyboard appendix when trying to flash the firmware?

Yes, I looked at the software. I am a professional programmer, I have contributed to Marlin. However, I won't be doing any "nice tweaks" for the Mini or contributing to github due to the warranty issue.

What happened to the Prusa developer program? Was that just a tease?

The two main things I would like to work on are fixing bugs that Prusa don't seem willing to, and reverting some of the breaking changes Prusa make. New features which nobody asked for are great, but please introduce them in a backwards compatible way.

Anyway, I would buy a clone board and run custom firmware on that. If I have an issue, I can swap back the Prusa board and my warranty is still valid.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

And one other thing, where is the source code for the bootloader? I would like to look at that.

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Not an expert on the topic, but this popped up...

We no longer have Arduino bootloader on MK3 ☺️ We can even update it together with FW flash. Anyways, RPi W Zero has reset connected via GPIO so you do not have to reset it as with FTDI chip when connecting.

— Josef Prusa (@josefprusa) December 12, 2017

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

@zoltan:

It would be great to have old features back. The explanation why M500 had to be removed doesn't really make sense.

https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/364

RE: Did you have a look at Firmware?

Posted by: @bobstro

Not an expert on the topic, but this popped up...

This tweet is about MK3. Different platform 🙂

I'm not sure how Mini is designed but this is a regular way for the LPC176* boards chips:
http://www.coineltech.com/LPC1768_USB_BL.pdf

Section 1 (1. WHAT IS A BOOT LOADER?) is describing the purpose of it and the usual behavior.