MarlinBuilder did a great job for us. But am I correct in saying we aren’t likely to continue to update it in the future? With jackpot being so good, I don’t see us going back to the skr.
I think we could change the main readme to a disclaimer that it hasn’t been updated in a while. And change the language at MarlinBuilder releases to reflect the same deprecation.
It is a shame, because I am very proud of that work we did. But it served its purpose and it’s time to put it out to pasture.
Existing SKR hardware can still run GrblHAL or Klipper, and for those wanting to use existing hardware but with new capabilities it may be worth noting this.
Having said that, we should clearly note that the future for our machines presently lies with FluidNC for the “yellow brick road” path to building a machine.
That’s useful. But more to the point, I think our version of marlin is getting old enough that it may be close to dangerous to encourage people to use software that old. There aren’t a lot of people testing that version of Marlin with new versions of platformio.
Yeah, good idea.
My viewpoint is slightly different. As a recent Jackpot/FluidNC adopter, I’ve been using the Marlin platforms for several years with complete success. While it’s certainly true that the “new" platforms are way cool (especially now that we have FluidTouch), and, I’m guessing that eventually, my LR4 will also go the Jackpot route, (and maybe even my self-designed laser, although it already runs on the MKS DLC32 which is supposedly FluidNC capable), for me, it has come down to one thing: COST.
I’m no Marlin expert but over the years, I’ve become comfortable with doing the slight modifications to the various pre-built configurations that V1E has supplied.
But, simply put, I could acquire the SKR 1.2 AND a display for around $40 or less. That’s usually been about half or less than the various alternatives through the years. As a confirmed “CNC toe-dipper" from my earliest Burly days, it has been important to maintain budget control and this was one way to help do it.
All that said, while I don’t see a valid reason to try to do any updates of the Marlin platforms, and, if Marlin moves far enough away from what is needed for the V1E platforms, it may become unsupportable, I would hope that somehow there will be room for folks to still consider the Marlin platforms, should they choose to do so. To that end, I think it would be nice to inform people that doing CNC in that way is still feasible, even if it must be largely self-supported.
I don’t want to remove any of the build products we have already. I just want to make it clear it is no longer being updated and should be treated as deprecated.
If someone wants to fork the project and maintain updates to it, they can. But the V1 version needs to change the style to show that it is not bleeding edge and no one is testing it anymore.