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USB or CAN upgrade path?


RainerBoden

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heya!

 

I decided its time to check & rebuild my gantry after multiple crashes and while doing that, I wanna upgrade to either a USB or CAN toolhead with an eddy bed sensor.

 

I have the LDO V2.4 R2 350mm kit and the wires, toolhead and gantry are still the unmodified ones from the kit.

 

CAN seems neat as I would only need one cable with the toolhead board and could splice the Cartographer probe in there. Also the cost of the Cartographer is cheaper.

But I read a lot of threads on here and a lot of people seem to be going to Beacon as it works better (?).

 

USB seems to be easier to configure. The Nighthawk board doesnt allow additional USB nodes to be added tho, so I would need to run 2 cables with the Beacon probe... and the new Nighthawk 36 does not use the fan adapter board in the stealthburner (which I want to keep).

Also the Beacon is not available atm in Germany, so it will be kinda expensive...

 

So the question is:

Is CAN still worth it, or is USB the more reliable and easier way even if the cost is higher?

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Bigtreetech has a new revision of their Stealthburner dedicated boards. SB2209 but USB this time. I have CAN one in my V2.4 and it works flawlessly. I'm also testing LDO's USB board - Orbitool O2 in my V0.2 for few days already and it's neat solution but I don't see that much difference in setting things up if you already know the stuff. IMO you can't go wrong with pre-made solutions like BTT's ones, where you don't have to crimp almost anything between toolhead board and mcu/CAN adapter. By the way, there are rumors that Nitehawk boards have some flaw and people tend to do returns. 

Edited by KepleRPL
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resident idiot here.

 

i have both the ebb (4) and the ldo orbitool o2.

i reflashed all my ebbs to be usb. can "sometimes" worked but it was way too much of a hassle honestly. usb was so much easier. sure you have an extra wire but that's fine considering that vs a full harness. since usb, working flawlessly.

 

ldo orbitool if coupled with the orbiter is absolutely effing amazing. im telling you, if it had a hole big enough....

preconfigured cfg is great, works no problem since installed. the cable that comes with it is high quality and if I'm not mistaken has usb functionality for the beacon. oh yeah and extra fan port. and if you are as intellectually challenged as i am, short circuit protection for those times that your attention span does not extend past the point where you need to concentrate on wire colors.

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I wasnt planning changing my extruder. Im quite happy with the CW2 atm.

Tho the Orbitool seems tempting...But I think im too lazy to reprint the entire toolhead atm.

17 hours ago, KepleRPL said:

Bigtreetech has a new revision of their Stealthburner dedicated boards. SB2209 but USB this time.

13 hours ago, nvanstaden said:

i reflashed all my ebbs to be usb. can "sometimes" worked but it was way too much of a hassle honestly. usb was so much easier.

This board seems like a good option!

The extruder motor driver seems to be on the underside. Does it get hot? Or is there a way to cool it (well, and the mcu)?

Also it looks like it has an integrated USB hub. They show how to connect a camera or the BTT Eddy to the board. Any info on that with the Beacon?

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I recently rebuilt my gantry and I tried both, USB and CAN. 

I also run a cartographer3D and my conclusion is CAN is the better choice. 

the only thing you really need to take care of is proper strain relief on all CAN wires, as cable movement easily throws the CAN bus off. 

also CAN bus is dedicated to our use case, where USB is just adopted and has it's own downsides. 

for me it's a no brainer after trying both. 

Edited by gueee
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Personally I have tried both, USB can be good if you plan on running other equipment as you can get absolutely miniature USB hubs so you can run something like a beacon or nozzle cam,

I am sticking to CAN however as it is much less susceptible to noise and has a much more durable connector on the board, pull off the USB connector and you'll be stuck, you also have to run power cables to the head regardless so you will probably have less hassle just running CAN

Currently I use a USB 3.0 cable to run both CAN and USB to the head as I need both,

It is also worth noting that (at least in my case) a CAN board can also be used with USB, so your not really going to be locked into either one unless you make the cable difficult to remove

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I've had USB and CAN toolhead boards and once I got CAN up and running I prefer that. The one thing I will note is that any board with an RP2040 MCU tended to overheat when mounted in a SB toolhead unless I modified the door with a fan mount. The boards with STM MCUs seem to tolerate higher temperatures much better. The other thing to note if using CAN is that having a beefy host with plenty of compute power helps a lot with avoiding "timer too close" errors. I've had issues running CAN on RP3 which upgrading to an RP4 mostly resolved. The printer I have with an RP5 has never had TTC errors even though I'm running 4 MCUs on the CAN bus. If you're running just one, an RP4 should be plenty.

Also, I've never used a beacon, but Cartographer on CAN has been great for me, especially since the release of their touch firmware (Survey) which is much easier to get up and running, and does not require a ton thermal calibrations like the "scan" software did. It still fast, and can create a mesh while moving at 400 mm/s and the touch feature works great at giving me perfect 1st layers. 

If you choose to go CAN, check out esoterical's can guide which covers how to set everything up in great detail. 

https://canbus.esoterical.online/

Edited by ShrapnelX
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Allright, seems like CAN is the fan favorite haha

Im gonna look at the Cartographer touch function. Cause that is why I would love to use the Beacon. Last time I checked the Cartographer touch was still in beta/testing.

Esoterical website is amazing. I read through it a lot while researching. So Im not worried about how hard it or how complicated it will be that much. USB just seemed more convinient. Well and then I saw Beacon and was amazed with it....

But if the Cartographer is at a similar stage with functionality, then its seems like the better option to go CAN.

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  • 1 month later...

Can has been working perfectly since i converted to it a year ago. I use the btt octopus board integrated can interface and checked the usb-can-bridhe checkbox when making the klipper firmware. So I have three free usbs left on the pi. I chose the moderate can speed 500000 bps, and its enough even for resonance measurements.

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On 10/21/2024 at 7:29 PM, daredo said:

I use the btt octopus board integrated can interface

im gonna do the same after finding Esoterical's CAN guide (before, finding anything about that was basically impossible...)

On 10/21/2024 at 7:29 PM, daredo said:

 I chose the moderate can speed 500000 bps, and its enough even for resonance measurements.

any reason for these speeds?

seems like all guides use 1.000.000 bps.

but i guess lower speeds are allright if there arent a lot of other CAN nodes on the bus

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/23/2024 at 8:23 AM, RainerBoden said:

any reason for these speeds?

seems like all guides use 1.000.000 bps.

but i guess lower speeds are allright if there arent a lot of other CAN nodes on the bus

1000k speed advanced to default only nowadays. A year or more ago, pretty much 500k was the standard. Or maybe there was no such thing as "standard", but everyone used a speed that was high enough for the needs, but wasn't too high for the parts and wiring to operate on.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/16/2024 at 10:16 PM, KepleRPL said:

Bigtreetech has a new revision of their Stealthburner dedicated boards. SB2209 but USB this time. I have CAN one in my V2.4 and it works flawlessly. I'm also testing LDO's USB board - Orbitool O2 in my V0.2 for few days already and it's neat solution but I don't see that much difference in setting things up if you already know the stuff. IMO you can't go wrong with pre-made solutions like BTT's ones, where you don't have to crimp almost anything between toolhead board and mcu/CAN adapter. By the way, there are rumors that Nitehawk boards have some flaw and people tend to do returns. 

I can confirm the Nitehawk boards have a significant issue. I help a friend (who lives on the same street), and he has gone through 3 of them. At that point, he gave up. He did nothing wrong there, just bad.

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