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Traumflug
That said, glad to see so many other 32-bit boards. kthx on IRC currently counts 10 such designs. The only really adorable thing about Smoothie is its marketing. Arthur got that really right. Just saw a review video of Thomas Sandlander and had to watch how he cheers on how you "just edit a text file for configuration" and praises it as revolutionary and new. In fact it's the exactly same thing we always did. We edited configuration.h and hit the upload button.
I'm annoyed at people talking authoritively about the Smoothie system when the seem to have not studied it much. How about I lend you a Smoothieboard, you actually use it in a machine, and then I'll accept whatever your opinion of it is.
It's not just Thomas Saladerer, many Smoothie users will tell you they find the configuration system much more user friendly. If you never heard somebody tell you that having to open the arduino IDE to affect changes is something offputting about Reprap, you are completely disconnected from what typical newcomers experience.
You don't care, you are a power user, having to open the arduino ide and edit source files is not a problem to you, ok, that's fine. But many people do care.
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Traumflug
Same for stepper drivers: works fine, but nothing new.
Again, please don't talk about a project if you haven't actually studied it on even a basic level, which is what I take away from your comments about it. Either that, or we do a very very bad job at actually showing it's features ( but you praise our marketting skills so much that's probably not it ).
Smoothie generates a smoother step pulse, does more precise acceleration, does longer look-ahead, has much better delta support, fixes issues that 8-bit firmwares do not or can not fix. The stepper drivers on the Smoothieboard can handle more current/heat than pololus, are easier to tune, and harder to break.
Yes, 8-bit firmwares work. Implying it can't be done better would be dumb. And Smoothie does it better. Read the source, or listen to it's users, or even try it yourself ( I'll lend you the board ).
Implying like you do, that the only thing Smoothie has going for it is it's marketting, is just completely ignoring it's actual design/features, and what it's users experience.