Apologies. I know the skr vs jackpot debate has happened a bit lately but I still don’t quite get it, despite searching.
I have an skr, in hindsight I would have bought a jackpot, but From what I understand the skr is still more than capable so I may as well use it.
Here’s my current confusion.
Jackpot is headless, and has fluid as firmware and gui.
Skr uses tft screen, marlin as firmware and no gui.
The gui bit is the consuming but for me.
With my 3d printers, I never use the tft for the firmware, I always just use an app on the pc. Some of the printers are WiFi, others usb. I use cura, orca etc.
Orca uses fluidd to communicate with my elegoo in app.
Is there something like this for the skr, where I can control the device from my Pc, or is that only available on the TFT.
If that’s the case I’m getting a jackpot now.
I love the ability to control by device in a decent interface.
Thats kindof the world im in right now. Machine is built, im ready to try homing/squaring etc. Ryans video and gcode snip look so easy to use on the tablet. Im sure Ill work out how to do it on the SKR, just doesnt look as firendly.
You can add a close cousin to the Web UI that FluidNC uses if you add an ESP-01S to your SKR. I’ll edit this post in a few minutes with links.
SKR pro is still a great board.
Jackpot / FluidNC does have advantages, not the least of which is that Ryan designed and supports the controller and FluidNC is in active development.
Edit: Here’s a good thread on the forum on how to add an ESP-01S to your SKR.
Maybe if enough existing SKR users ask nice, Ryan would add them back to the store so upgraders don’t need to buy and flash their own. Maybe with a reasonable markup for the time he spends flashing them.
Maybe that’s a sub section of the instructions. For marlin/SKR you put the gcode on the SD card and then start the job from the TFT (Or if you add an ESP-01, from the web GUI)
Edit 2: Pinging @vicious1 so he sees this tread. This topic has come up multiple times the last few days.
Not the same, you must have a klipper based printer. Neither jackpot or SKr has this.
Again, not the same. Fluidd, and FluidNC are very differnt things. I see the confusion now though. FluiDD is an interface for klipper, FluidNC is the firmware that does motion calculations for the CNC’s on the Jackpot board.
Start with the TFT, it is a touch screen, it is pretty easy. You can plug it in and use your computer but that is a recipe for disaster. There is another option Jim mentioned but again, way more work than is needed here.
The CNC pretty much only needs you to hit “go” and in some cases “resume”. You not need anything like you are used to with a 3D printer.
It really is the same exact thing, for now. The SKR has you do more typing for leveling and squaring but you will not do that very often. You do it when you first set it up and after that only if you need. I had not needed to for more than a year with my LR3.
If the TFT GUI is unclear, I don’t think setting up the raspberry pi and and v1pi is going to be any easier. The same exact commands will need to be used in the end after all that setup and expense.
I guess I’m just feeling a tad stupid at the moment. I know the instructions are there to get the initial setup done right, but I just am not quite getting it. I hoped a gui would help me.
I have no issues with designing in fusion converting in cnc software, loading the sd card etc to start the code to cut.
Just can’t get my head around the really important bit of machine setup. Which is frustrating because you have done an awesome job of making it super simple. I just should spend the cash on a jackpot
But I’m sooooo close to making it work. It’s sitting on a bench ready for me to give it some commands to do it’s thing. At the moment I’m just driving it around for fun 100mm at a time in the tft gui.
I currently have an SKR Pro controlling my LR3 (int he process of building my Jackpot controlled LR4). My setup and workflow:
I have a PC connected via USB to my SKR Pro. As the PC is at the opposite side of my workshop from the LR3, I use a USB-CAT5-USB extender (works great, irrelevant, but interesting). I use Repetier-Host to connect and control my LR3. Due to the way Repetier buffers commands, it can’t be used effectively to control the LR3 in real-time. The machine will respond to individual commands immediately, but if controlling a job, telling the LR3 to stop from repetier may not stop the machine for up to 30 secs. So once I set a job off, I always monitor and control from the TFT screen. This means that I don’t have to transfer/insert SD cards, as I just send the job and start it from the PC.
My CNC software is Carveco, which I use on my laptop from the comfort of my sofa in my house. Once it generates a g-code file, I then send it via wifi/network to my workshop PC for job initiation.
I’m going to have to review my workflow when I get my LR4 an Jackpot controller set up.
Please, it is far superior to load your Gcode onto the SD card and run it from there. That giant cable you have is just asking for trouble.
We do not have any real time firmware, both marlin and Fluid buffer commands, this is not a repetier thing.
So, I am not actually hearing any issues you are having. Everything seems to work. You did nothing like the instructions here say but you seem to have things working. The only issue you mentioned is command buffering, which is not an issue it is necessary for smooth look ahead accelerations. The jackpot is not going to change that for you.
I’m not having any issues. I was just trying to make the point to Chenz that it is possible to do basic control and file transfer to an SKR Pro.
I did have issues when using a long (5m) usb cable initially, which is why I changed to a usb to cat5 converter. This works great.
The control of the SKR with Repetier is not much different to the FluidNC webUI for movement/jogging etc., but at least I can transfer gcode to the sdcard in the SKR using Repetier, rather than taking the card out every time.
One of the other reasons that I have my machine connected the way that I do is to allow me to control a laser module on the LR3 from Lightburn.
I’ve yet to figure out how to do this on the LR4 and Jackpot.
As an aside, the LR4 is a work of geniuses (plural of genius ). The quality of the design is exceptional.
I run my JL1 laser with a Jackpot and LightBurn. It’s connected via USB.
That said, I have tested saving .gcode from LightBurn and running that from either the FluidDial pendant and also from the FluidNC Web UI.
All of those modes are workable.
I wouldn’t want to be running laser ops on a large machine with a flying controller over USB, though it would probably work.
). The quality of the design is exceptional.