@ronlawrence3 @bar
Especially given the problems that people are having getting the belts to retract properly, I think it’s extremely valuable to give people a way of testing the arms before the system is fully assembled (so that they can be taken apart easily if needed.
Please add a popup somewhere (debugging/testing/expert/advanced/???) that would let a person test all the electronics.
- connect one or more encoders and verify operation (does spinning the magnet manually work, even before you assemble the two halves of the arm)
- be able to control each arm motor manually (hold/retract/extend/comply with a settable current limit and/or speed setting)
- be able to run each Z motor independently (including the report when they stall out from the stepper drivers)
We can then rearrange the assembly instructions to fire up the electronics first, and at each step of the way, plug the parts in to the board and test not only that everything works, but how well it works (things like 'what is the minimum current needed to spin the spool, or possibly even only the motor/encoder)
I think it will be both more rewarding for users to be able to verify that they have things done right at an earlier stage, and save grief in the long run as people won’t have to disassemble things to fix issues that could have been discovered earlier.