I wonder how easy would it be to swap the controller for something more open like the BTT boards? That way you’d get the nice design and an open platform. I’m not sure how much of their wiring could be repurposed for this though.
The controller, at least in the A1 and A1 mini, is an ESP chip. Probably an ESP32S3. You don’t need to swap any hardware, just open it up and find its UART pins to flash it.
(I know they’re ESPs because the device name shows up as espressif on my router)
That doesn’t mean it’s the board actually controlling the printer though. It could just be used as an interface component because they’re easy to use as the middle-man on network connected devices.
You’d be surprised how often the UART is already exposed for factory programming.
As well, what I gathered from that thread is that they aren’t supported, because it’s a bit of overhead, and because they aren’t supported no one makes ESP32 printer boards. I think if suddenly a whole bunch of folks with A1s wanted to replace the firmware that might be a good userbase to add support for?
Maybe, maybe not it’s hard to say. I think most BL printer owners don’t really care or don’t want to mess with soldering tiny wires to tiny pads on their board and mess with flashing the device. The people buying these are generally not the tech-fiddling type.
I’m the tech-fiddling type and I bought one, my housemate is the tech-fiddling type and she bought one, our friend is the tech-fiddling type and she bought one. We all bought them because we wanted to spend our tech-fiddling time on the projects themselves and not on the printer.
I wonder how easy would it be to swap the controller for something more open like the BTT boards? That way you’d get the nice design and an open platform. I’m not sure how much of their wiring could be repurposed for this though.
The controller, at least in the A1 and A1 mini, is an ESP chip. Probably an ESP32S3. You don’t need to swap any hardware, just open it up and find its UART pins to flash it.
(I know they’re ESPs because the device name shows up as espressif on my router)
That doesn’t mean it’s the board actually controlling the printer though. It could just be used as an interface component because they’re easy to use as the middle-man on network connected devices.
I am fairly sure it’s what is controlling the printer.
Looking at the board, I think you’re right but it’s definitely a custom board so exposing the UART might be fairly difficult.
Although it looks like it wouldn’t do much good (no klipper support for esp32)
You’d be surprised how often the UART is already exposed for factory programming.
As well, what I gathered from that thread is that they aren’t supported, because it’s a bit of overhead, and because they aren’t supported no one makes ESP32 printer boards. I think if suddenly a whole bunch of folks with A1s wanted to replace the firmware that might be a good userbase to add support for?
Maybe, maybe not it’s hard to say. I think most BL printer owners don’t really care or don’t want to mess with soldering tiny wires to tiny pads on their board and mess with flashing the device. The people buying these are generally not the tech-fiddling type.
I’m the tech-fiddling type and I bought one, my housemate is the tech-fiddling type and she bought one, our friend is the tech-fiddling type and she bought one. We all bought them because we wanted to spend our tech-fiddling time on the projects themselves and not on the printer.
Great, then you can band together and make the klipper version and use it…easy peasy
Your own little bubble doesn’t say much about the general buyers of BL printers.