The answer to the great question about life universe and everything else!
Hi! We own a MK3S that we connected to a Raspberry Pi running Prusa Link. It works well.
That is something you will share at your christmas party :
This morning, on the printer display, where usually the IP adress of the machine is written,there was a message :
The answer to the great question about life, universe and everything else is 42!
So! Thinking it might be a prank, I checked the gcode of the last print for a M117 command (or the word universe). Nothing.Thinking it might be an easter egg, I googled it and found nothing relevant that is linked to Prusa. I even checked the smart lock thinking somebody might have come here during the weekend.
Where else should I check to find how somebody might have been able to display that message?
Of course : that allusion to Hitch hiker guide to galaxy is cool and funny. But I desperately want to understand how it was done!
RE: The answer to the great question about life universe and everything else!
So! Looks like it is an easter egg linked to the experimental ECool feature. I have no idea how I triggered it or how to make it appear again.
I found this in ultralcd.cpp that is part of the firmware code :
bool UserECoolEnabled(){
// We enable E-cool mode for non-farm prints IFF the experimental menu is visible AND the EEPROM_ECOOL variable has
// a value of the universal answer to all problems of the universe
return ( eeprom_read_byte((uint8_t *)EEPROM_ECOOL_ENABLE) == EEPROM_ECOOL_MAGIC_NUMBER )
&& ( eeprom_read_byte((uint8_t *)EEPROM_EXPERIMENTAL_VISIBILITY) == 1 );
and this in eeprom.h :
// Magic string, indicating that the current or the previous firmware running was the Prusa3D firmware.#define EEPROM_FIRMWARE_PRUSA_MAGIC 0#define EEPROM_ECOOL_MAGIC_NUMBER 42
I googled it and found nothing about either Marlin or Prusa Firmware but I can't believe I am the first one to step on that...