Maslow Home Maslow Community Garden Newsletter

Clarifications on Firmware Upgrades

Software Maslow Firmware
#1

AFAICT from docs, Holey is the “best” insofar as that it does a better job with calibration than stock.

For some reason, I’m getting timeout/errors when I try to upgrade from sock firmware within WebControl. I am guessing I should manually upgrade from Android IDE (?) If so, should I use the Holey firmware from the WebControl repo, or is there a better option?

Also, w.r.t. upgrades, I take it that flashing firmware has no effect on any system settings or calibration (which is all stored in Groud/Web Control)? So post-upgrade, it’ll work as normal but I can then run a “holey test cut?”

#2

Bookmarking for ‘Decision Guide’ to be created in documentation.

1 Like
#3

You’re running from within a docker container and maybe something wasn’t included in the build. Are you able to “see” into the docker container and view what error messages may be reported to the terminal?

You can manually install the firmware and should be able to run the calibration. It will be technically uncalibrated because the new firmware adds new settings and has different math for calculating chain lengths. But it will work well enough as-is to perform the calibration cuts.

#4

Yes—you’re describing the output from /dev/stderr and /dev/stdout, which Docker spits into the built-in log system. This looks suspicious to me:

Checking latest pyrelease.
Error checking pyrelease: could not convert string to float: '2020-05-26-2021'
None

I’ll rebuild the Docker image with the latest release and if that doesn’t fix it I’ll investigate directly.

Just want to be clear here because I don’t have a second set of hands right now to help with a full re-calibration. I’ll be able to skip chain length measurement and related calibration steps, and go straight to the holey calibration cuts?

#5

I think that’s the problem… the master branch apparently has a parsing issue due to changes in the build process.

Yes, you should be able to go straight to Holey Calibration, do the cuts, enter the measurements, and calculate the optimized settings.

1 Like
#6

FWIW, I got the .hex file from the WebControlCNC releases.

To upgrade firmware for the Pi, first make sure that neither WebControl nor anything else is connecting to the Maslow. Then, the upgrade will look something like this:

sudo apt-get install avrdude -y
wget https://github.com/WebControlCNC/Firmware/releases/download/2020-05-23-1229/holey-51.28.hex
avrdude -v -patmega2560 -cwiring -P/dev/ttyACM0 -b115200 -D -Uflash:w:/home/pi/holey-51.28.hex:i

The test cut went well—the measurements were reassuringly consistent.

2 Likes
#7

Thanks @zaneclaes, this helped immensely since I’m running WebControl natively in Python on Mac.

1 Like