Honestly, I was looking at going this route as well… but not so much because of connection issues.
It’s just that sometimes I want to do something quick and my tablet is old one, and since I’m not always using it, it might not be charged right then, or whatever.
Like with my printer… sometimes I flip it on and just do a couple things from the attached screen… but the majority of the time, I’m on Mainsail and remote management.
I just want the option to use the pendant quickly if I need it. I need to power it on and move it out of the way quickly, etc. etc.
I seriously only use the ui to start my job, or resume from a tool change. I don’t really see the need for many people to stay connected.
Maybe this is the entire wrong conversation. Let’s go back to a board and LCD. I bet we could find a very low cost board LCd combo these days. The SKR was too expensive we only used it to get the touch interface, from there I assumed the touch interface on the cell phone for half the price was the right choice but it does not seem to be the case honestly.
What is available these days with a built-in / wired display?
The biggest issue we keep seeing more and more of with AP mode is that some computers don’t seem to like networks without internet access. It wants to switch to a network with internet access. Plus issues with captive portal.
I guess my point is that there are challenges with both modes.
In case it’s not apparent, I don’t have any issues with whatever is used, just providing my observations.
This captive portal has irritated me since I tried uiV3. on my devices I can not scroll up on uiv3 in the captive portal, literally everything else I need works fine. We are stuck on uiv2 because of this. my computers hapily follow the link to 192.168.0.1 but my android devices do not.
I need to hear it all. Don’t forget, I am just one guy in a garage that uses an android in AP mode. I need to hear how it is being used, what I might be missing.
I’m not irritated or anything, I am trying to figure out how to make the first user experience easier and cheaper. I just want to finish the lr4 instructions so I can start making machines again. The shipping issues are finally stable, so now that that wasted year is behind me, I want to make something tangible!!! The only reason I started making a new jackpot is I was trying to fix some basic issues with connections. Seems we might have found it is not the yellow brick road I thought it was.
This is just my opinion. But I don’t think it was the wrong choice at all. I have much preferred running my machines with Fluid than I ever did with Marlin. No matter what you do not everyone will agree. I personally have a mesh node in my garage so STA works great for me. And I LOVE not having to deal with the SD card. Was it hard to do? No. Was it a total aggravation? YES.
That m5 is awesome, but dang if I don’t feel like it is too expensive. All said and done, how much did they cost you to make? dial, buttons, cable, and both connections?
mDNS/avahi/bonjour can do a lot for finding the device on a local network.
Bluetooth might also be able to help us get an initial connection and revive that connection after switching to STA.
What most manufacturers of smart home things do is to have an app for android and apple. Something that could do a little legwork and find the device and connect might be the ultimate solution. Or it could try to connect over BT to get details like address and swap wifi info.
But that is all a lot more expensive. And it would require time spent on the fluid side.
I’m not surprised that the fluidnc discord suggests sta. They have customers higher in the food chain and are willing to put in more effort and have more knowledge.
So the draw for STA mode is file transfer wirelessly. How do you control your machine in the shop if you are using a remote device in STA mode, do most of you use the pendant?
It’s not a secret I never got into FluidNC. When using it at school at the open day it was annoying to have to reconnect for every file I wanted to run.
I have a pendant now. But before that I used a cheap amazon tablet/phone. Its already on my wifi network so I just go to the IP and its done. I also have the LR4 set up static IP in my router so the address never changes. I know that’s not what a lot of people will do. Just sharing how I do it.
When using it at school at the open day it was annoying to have to reconnect for every file I wanted to run.