I confess I never actually used Pronterface, as I had an OctoPrint RPi box up and running before my first 3D printer was even fully operational.Quote
dc42
Thanks for the additional comments.
Regarding Ethernet support and a web interface, the Duet electronics and firmware provides an excellent web interface at the same time as running the printer, all on a 84MHz Cortex M3 processor with 96K RAM. The benefit is huge IMO. Once you have used the web interface, you never want to go back to Pronterface.
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The big hurdle I see for this new project is that basically it offers almost the same feature set as a Duet board (except for the fact that the Duet includes 4 Allegro A4982 steppers drivers soldered in), and yet one of its objectives is to reach a manufacturing cost similar to that of an Arduino Mega 2560 + RAMPS combo, something I would deem is very difficult if not impossible.
Also, since the Duet project is completely open source and has already achieved the "working" status, wouldn't it be simpler to just edit the Duet schematics and PCB design to remove the Allegro chips and include headers for Pololu-style carrier boards?
Back to cost considerations: a Duet board goes for around $120 + shipping whereas I can source a Mega 2560 + RAMPS + 5 x DRV8825 Pololu carriers + 12864LCD for approx. $35 (including shipping), and an extra dual core Cortex A7 1GHz Debian Linux box with WiFi for approximately $50 (again including shipping).
So for a grand total of $85 I get a lot more functionality than a basic Duet board and I still save $35.
Given these facts, I have a hard time convincing myself that I should use a Duet board or something similar and similarly expensive.
Wouldn't it be a lot faster to develop, simpler, cheaper and more effective to just move the heavy duty processing to the Linux box and leave only the nitty-gritty realtime pulse generation and sensor reading to the Mega 2560?
Since some people may not be aware of how practical OctoPrint can be to use, I am including a screenshot of OctoPrint just as I am using it right now, as I write these lines:
