Brainwave
Description
Features
- Small footprint: only 60mm x 79mm!
- 12V power input
- Micro USB connector
- All connectors at edge of board, vertical or right-angle connectors will fit.
- Atmel AT90USB646 microcontroller w/ USB bootloader
- 1, 2, 16 or 32x microstepping @ up to 800mA
- Dual Z-axis connectors
- Optional per channel current attenuation
- Heated bed support with separate power input (up to 24V @ 15A)
- Integrated heater/thermistor/stepper connector for E channel
- Fan control
Instructions
2. Install Arduino 1.0.2
3. install the brainwave arduino hardware bundle from github.com/unrepentantgeek/brainwave-arduino into the Arduino hardware directory.
4. Get Marlin. I am maintaining a branch of Marlin that will compile for brainwave at github.com/unrepentantgeek/Marlin/tree/brainwave Marlin HEAD has support, but it doesn't always compile cleanly for this board.
Hardware configuration
Set micro-stepping selector jumpers (D1, D2) per channel. Short both for 32x microstepping. See table on back of board for other configurations. Default: single-step.
Set stepper current reference voltages. I = V / 2.55. Default: 1V == 400mA.
Software configuration
Open Arduino, find the Marlin directory and open Marlin.ino. Select 'Brainwave' from the Board menu. Find the Configuration.h file and change DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT to suit your printer (remember, 32x microsteps!) Power on the Brainwave and connect the USB cable
(note: the brainwave will not power up off USB, you need the 12V supply.) Hold down the PROGRAM button and press RESET, the STATUS led should pulse. Press the Upload button in Arduino. After a reset the brainwave will show up as a CDC ACM serial device (/dev/ttyACM[0..9] on Linux) and be ready to accept commands.
Brandon Bowman wrote up an excellent guide for getting the board working under Windows and MacOS: fabbersuw.blogspot.com/2012/12/if-your-brainwaves-got-no-brains-or.html
Brainwave wiring diagram provided by Brandon Bowman.
Known issues
- It may take a couple of presses of the RESET button to get the firmware to come up after flashing.
- You may need a thermistor or similar 100k resistance present across the bed and extruder thermistor inputs. Otherwise Marlin may go into a deathloop and you'll never even see a serial device. Even if it doesn't fall on it's face it will only sit and complain about too high temp.
Primary development of Brainwave will continue at github.com/unrepentantgeek/Brainwave
Special thanks
Julie Atwood
Matt Westervelt
Frederik Hubinette
Silas Snider
Johann Rocholl
JP Sugarbroad
Austin Appleby
Richard DeLeon
Plamena Milusheva
Mark Ganter
Brandon Bowman
You must be logged in to post a comment.
I'm just adding this board to the RepRap wiki "Comparison of Electronics" page. What are the stepper driver chips?
Has anyone designed a printable case for this or do I have to do it?
Does the microcontroler has enough code space for firmwares like modified delta marlin?, or the most recent one for the kossel delta 3d printer?
Interested in buying, but i have to be sure it will work in a delta 3d printer
Yes, there's room for the delta Marlin firmware. Johann is using a brainwave on at least one of his printers. You get 60k at the moment (64k - 4k bootloader) but there's a 1k experimental bootloader coming if that's not quiet enough.
If you really need more than that, the MCU can be replaced with the AT90USB1286 for 128k.
I guess the idea here is that the board should be cheap enough that if you fry a stepper driver, you just replace the entire board?
No actually, if you fry a driver your replace just the fried bit. This is actually way easier than it looks! You first cut the pins off the dead part with an x-acto type blade, removing the body. Then you sweep the pins off the board with a hot iron. Apply lots of flux to the pads and tack the new chip in place at the corners, then solder the rest down. It helps to have some sort of magnification, but it can be done without.
I intend to make a guide on doing this when I get some free time.
Thanks for sharing, Do you sell the components only for this controller? My circuit board is ready I need all the components to give it a try.
My firmware wouldn't even flash unless I hit the RESET button right before the code started uploading to the board. (Windows 7 Arduino 1.02).
Once that hurdle was crossed, it worked great!
License
More from unrepentantgeek
More from 3D Printer Parts
Does this support having an SD card and LCD controller?
No, that requires a more flash and more 5v power from the board than it has.