[Closed] SD Card reader not working  

Re: SD Card reader not working

hi peter thank you

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi,

I have the same problem: I can see the "Card inserted" and "Card removed", and everything worked fine before. Now when I go to the menu after "Card inserted" is displayed, I only see "No SD Card" in the menu. Clicking that just shows the two dots and upper level option to go back to Main 🙁

I can read the card without problems on my OSX. I know the stupid OSX additional directories and indexes are added, so I tried even removing those to let the card be without any junk, but it does not help.

Tried to restart the printer with the card inserted with the same result: "No SD Card" when trying to print.

Is this a hardware issue or something the could be sorted by software update?

Otherwise the assembly of the printer and first few prints were superb! I was really amazed on the quality and easiness of how everything went together 😀

Cheers,
Ossi

Re: SD Card reader not working

I don't know if anyone has tried this but I was getting the same SD card error when I inserted my own SD card. I have OSX and formatted the card to MS-DOS (FAT) and now it works fine. I bought my machine on 2/16/2016 so maybe its already been addressed and my point in moot.

Re: SD Card reader not working

I tried reformatting the with FAT16 on my mac with no luck. It's the very same card that worked just fine before adding a couple of gcode files into it.

I've had some issues with the silly OSX indexing directories, which I also removed to make sure the card contained nothing extra, and only valid filenames such as test.gcode etc.

The printer simply says it recognises card being inserted but cannot read it anymore while OSX of course can without problems.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi Ossi

Sounds as though the best thing you can do is to get the card re-formatted (you will need FAT32) maybe on a Windows PC, create some GCode files (did you save the originals?) and try again.

Peter

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi Josef,

The card was initially formatted to FAT32, but reformatting to FAT16/32 does not work. I've tried everything: cleaning up the card entirely with everything but a couple of gcode files like mentioned above.

Just emphasising that I consider myself quite professional what comes to dealing with computers, file systems and hardware (been doing that for the better part of 20 years now). My conclusion is that this has to be either a software or hardware issue, or a combination of both: wrong settings (timeout or some other value) causing the device not to be able to read the content of the SD card for whatever reason.

I assume the "No SD Card" might also mean it has not recognised the card/file system inside? Any debugging information would be valuable.

Thanks.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Ossi

I am not Josef, nor am I associated with Prusa Research... Just here trying to assist.

There have been situations in the past where there was a fault with the LCD panel whereby the SD card would not be recognised. To the best of my knowledge, that problem was cleared up by support a couple of months ago. However, you do have the option of contacting support (live chat on the shop pages) to advise them of your problems.

The more recent cases of this have been down to incorrect formatting, bad card readers connected to the PC and other non-printer related issues.

Peter

Re: SD Card reader not working

My apologies, I somehow presumed it was Josef answering to the thread 🙂 No worries there and I appreciate the help.

Again, the SD card reader worked flawlessy until a point I took it away, inserted into my Macbook, added a couple of files and then took it back to the printer. It saw the files, but on the second time it did not recognise it anymore and I tried the formatting and all the things one usually does in these cases. OSX has never had issues on reading the card though.

Having tinkered with Arduino and even my car, I've noticed some weird behaviour previously like that the card cannot have files beginning with dot (.) such as the stuff OSX indexing puts there, trashes etc. Hence I tried removing all of those as well without luck. I also tried FAT32 formatting for the 8Gb card, but haven't yet tried the 2GB partitioning which someone recommended for trying.

It's obvious that either the printer has a buggy or non-compatible software or a faulty reader. Just looking for a solution there, be it a firmware update or something else, that would allow it to read the card as other machines have no trouble of doing so.

If there is a trick that needs to be done to make the card compatible, then I would of course try that as well.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Ossi

Unlike some, I do put my name at the end of each post, and my signature makes it quite clear that I am not associated with Prusa Research in any way.

It may also be a faulty OSX/card reader/SD card; please don't blame the printer or its firmware when there are many people on here using a variety of operating systems (including OSX) with the printer's SD card and it working fine. You have stated that it did work until you did something; there may be a clue there.

Personally I know nothing about any MAC equipment, so I don't know what hidden files may be created, but it does appear as though there is something on the card preventing it from being read.

Certainly, I have not heard about 2GB partitioning on these forums.

Have you tried a different card? Have you contacted support to see what they say? Please try one or even both of these suggestions. If you do contact support, give then a link to your first post in this thread; that will assist them in finding a solution.

Peter

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi,

First of all again disclaimer if you will: I have nothing but respect for the quality of Prusa i3 printer and Josef himself, so this is definitely not a rant, but merely I'm trying to figure out the issue and, if possible, help with the solution so that also others will benefit from it. I'm software industry professional so I think I know something about these things, but with hardware you might say that I'm a noobie 😕

That being said, the 2GB tip came from another forum, where the discussion was around some other i3 repraps, possibyl Geeetech or similar, which might or might not be using same hardware somewhere in the build, so there might also be some clues what might help one onwards with the issue.

And what do you know, the tip actually paid out. Here's in detail what I did:

I downloaded a program called fat32 which allows you to explicitly format devices in FAT32 in latest OSX El Capitan, which has an updated disk utility with less options than before.

I called the program: $ ./fat32 /dev/disk2 PRUSAI3 2G

Where /dev/disk2 is obviously my memory card (yours may vary) and PRUSAI3 the name for the volume, and 2G is the size I preferred. This is the card that came with the printer, and is 8GB actual size, so I assume it should work with the hardware as well, which it also did previously before the problems started.

This formatted the disk to 2GB and then I checked the files in it just to be sure:

$ ls -al /Volumes/PRUSAI3/
total 1152
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 4 root admin 136 Feb 23 21:03 ..
drwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 .Trashes
-rwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 ._.Trashes
-rwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 ._XT60.gcode
-rwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 ._X_Axis.gcode
drwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:03 .fseventsd
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 OssiTiltti staff 183215 Feb 23 21:03 XT60.gcode
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 OssiTiltti staff 373655 Feb 23 21:03 X_Axis.gcode

This is where you see these dot-files I mean, that are part of how OSX indexes devices. You can turn the indexing off (mdutil -i off /dev/disk2 , in case someone is interested) but this does not remove the existing files, or not all of them. So I simply deleted everything so that the end result was this:

$ ls -al /Volumes/PRUSAI3/
total 1104
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 OssiTiltti staff 4096 Feb 23 21:04 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 4 root admin 136 Feb 23 21:03 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 183215 Feb 23 21:03 XT60.gcode
-rwxrwxrwx 1 OssiTiltti staff 373655 Feb 23 21:03 X_Axis.gcode

Now, after inserting the SD card into the reader, Prusa i3 was happy to read it and continue printing.

So, at least this worked for me. And I tried same with formatting the card to 8GB, but it again provided the "No SD Card" result.

Now comes the part where I want to help. If this is indeed the case that there are limitations on what the OS on the Prusa i3 can read regarding SD card content, I have two suggestions what we could do here: 1) Improve the documentation to cover these and add possibly a OSX user section, which I'm happy to help with, to cover what ever we can find out. 2) Improve the printer software to handle this better.

Looking at the option #2, possible things I would suggest are:

- Instead of displaying "No SD Card", which is obviously a bit misleading, a better message could be displayed. This could be "Unreadable SD card" or something that fits the screen, but gives you an idea that there is rather something wrong with the card than the physical reader.
- Instead of displaying ".." and "back" in the menu, even the "No SD Card" is selected, this could give you another clue that "Cannot read the content of the card. See manual." or something. In the first place, it's poor UX that you can select a card that is not there, if you see what I mean?
- Better yet, if there are options in the software that would improve the handling of different file systems, that's of course preferred as well. I've seen things when tinkering with Arduino and SD Card readers, that sometimes this is a timeout issue: some cards are slower, some are faster, and somewhere there is a simple timeout that does not allow enough time to read for instance 32GB card full of files, whereas it can do it for 2GB card etc. In these cases you just try different values until it works, and possibly improve error messages by saying like: "Timeout when reading card. Possibly too many files or invalid data. Check your timeout value or card content."

Again, I know a thing or do on software, so I'm happy to help here to make things better, but since I'm complete beginner with Prusa i3, Rambo board and such, I need to get familiar with what my options are.

Thanks for you help, Peter, so far. Really appreciate it, and hopefully you see that I'm here to help, not to rant 😉

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi Ossi

Great news and thanks for the info.

I also have a Chinese clone (similar to one of the Geetech models). The only problems with the SD card I have had was the very poor quality of the one supplied with that printer. As I now use OctoPrint with both printers, I don't use SD cards at all.

Peter

Re: SD Card reader not working

The one supplied with Prusa original was a quality card, much like everything else in the package, so I have my doubts more on the software side - combined with the SD card reader perhaps.

I need to dig a bit deeper to see what is the actual error why the reader does not understand the content to come up with any suggestions. I found the firmware from github so that's a start 🙂

Re: SD Card reader not working

Ossi

I would advise that you forget about the firmware and have a look at the controller chip on the LCD panel. Various different chips have been provided to PR, some of which were not "as reliable" as others.

Peter

EDIT: I should add that the LCD firmware is virtually standard Marlin, in use my millions of 3d printer users worldwide.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Again I see that I need to study a bit more on the entire concept how the Prusa i3 is constructed. Could you point to a documentation/wiki that would list all the components involved? Or is reprap.org the best place to start with?

Thanks again.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Ossi

As far as I cam tell, the "original" uses standard Marlin firmware which is adjusted slightly (Configuration.prusa.h) for specific items.

In addition, there are changes to the Marlin firmware to include things such as M600 (change filament) code and in the later releases the updated LCD refresh, Z calibration micro-step adjustment, quiet operation etc.

The majority of the code is the generic Marlin which contains various compile- and run-time options to cater for different boards, extruders and other components.

The SD card and LCD coding is defined in Configurations.h simply as ULTRA_LCD and SDSUPPORT which triggers the Marlin standard coding.

Peter

EDIT: the mini RAMBo 1.3a wiki is a good starting point as the printer is built around that board.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Thanks, Peter. Super useful information. I'll do some digging on both the Rambo wiki and Marvin software to get a better understanding of the things and tinkering. Much appreciated.

Re: SD Card reader not working

Ossi

I guess you mean "Marlin" firmware??? 😉

If you need any further information, please ask.

Peter

Re: SD Card reader not working

I also had/have this problem. I have an Original Prusa i3. When I talked to tech support, they went over things and then sent out a new control panel. At first this seemed to work, but I soon realized that the SD cards that came with the kit and replacement control panel worked intermittently. These were micro SD cards with adapters. For me, I've found that all the SD micro adapter cards, that I have, are only working some times. I have no problems with normal SD cards that I have. I'd be curious to know if normal SD cards are problematic for others.
David

Re: SD Card reader not working

Hi,

In my case, any other sd card, even without adaptor, had the same issue: impossible to see sdcard content, or when by chance it's possible, the file list is randomly corrupted.

However after some discussion with the support by chat and mail, we did a test that completly fixed the issue: switching the two cable between the lcd and the rambomini.
The lcd screen continue to work well, even with the cable that didn't work with the sdcard reader.

I wonder if this connexion is more sensible to external influence, and if a shielded cable would be better.

Re: SD Card reader not working

I'm having the same (or similar) issue as the OP. When I insert an SD card, the main screen states "Card inserted" but when I try to open the files it shows "No SD Card". I also get lots of onscreen gibberish occasionally when inserting an SD card, or starting up with one installed. I can print via USB, but it's unreliable (my computer's fault) and I would prefer to print from the SD card. I just received the printer a few days ago, firmware is 3.0.9. I have tried multiple SD cards, including the one included with the kit and nothing makes a difference.

I'm surprised there aren't more issues as this seems like a shielding issue, but then I'd expect issues during print when all the steppers are running.