Saturday, February 1, 2014

Uploading the Firmware Onto the Arduino Mega (Video 21)

Recap: I've built a Prusa Mendel 3-D printer from a kit I purchased from nwreprap.com.  I'm in the middle of performing some additional steps to prepare the printer for a first print.  I'm following along with a set of videos available on YouTube.  To complete these steps correctly, you need to have installed the Arduino Driver.

Uploading the Arduino Firmware

Launch the Arduino Software (click on the Arduino icon)



Click File in the menu bar, choose "Open" and navigate to the Sprinter software that you downloaded.  There should be either a file called "Sprinter.pde" or a file called "Sprinter.ino" there depending on the version.  Highlight it and click "Open".  Files with ".pde" or ".ino" extensions are known as "sketches" in Arduino software.



Now you'll see a multi-tabbed interface.  The sketch file appears in a tab called "Sprinter" and all of the other files in the same directory are opened in additional tabs.  All of the available tabs are available from one menu that is accessible from an arrow icon near the upper-right of the window.



You need to switch to the tab that holds the Configuration.h file.  If you don't immediately see this tab, look for it on the "All Tabs" menu on the upper-right.

Once in the Configuration.h file, some lines are commented out by using two slashes and some lines are "set".  Lines that are commented out are there as merely a "comment" and have no real effect.

For example:
//#define THIS_IS_COMMENTED_OUT
#define THIS_IS_SET

make sure that the following values are set up somewhere in your Configuration.h:

#define MOTHERBOARD 33
#define BAUDRATE 250000
#define SDSUPPORT
#define SDINITFILE

Note that the calibration steps that I will describe in a later blog entry will require us to come back to this file and change other parameters such as _AXIS_PER_STEP_UNIT

Next, save the Configuration.h file by clicking File..Save

Next, make sure that the board and the serial port are set correctly.  Your serial port might be different than the one in the screen shots.





Next, compile and upload the software to the Arduino.  Make sure it is connected to your PC.



The progress is displayed at the bottom the Arduino window



You should see this when it's complete:


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