Does anyone know why the old 15.04.6 Cura (latest version of the old one) constantly has issues connecting on Windows 10 to smoothie? Some users report that it gets stuck at “opening serial port”, even after they install Arduino separately to make sure the drivers are installed. For a few select users, after they install arduino separately, they are then able to connect.
From the smoothieware website: “There is no need to install the drivers on Windows 10, it should all work out of the box. In fact installing the drivers on Windows 10 may cause trouble.”
Seems it’s a Microsoft issue? At a loss here.
+Peter van der Walt ^
It sucks that it seems Cura is slowly drifting away into a closed ecosystem primarily for Ultimaker. Can’t blame them… but it sucks.
One user is reporting that sometimes when he disconnects the USB cable and reconnects it, then it is able to connect? I doubt it’s the USB connection though after talking to him. It’s sporadic, the whole connection issue and it seems to be only those who have Windows 10.
@Shai_Schechter do your printers come with a smoothie, are some of your users converting, or is this independent testing?
@raykholo Our printers aren’t physically hackable. All our users use our custom smoothie board.
The complementary mosfet to softconnect the USB was a bitch to diagnose. Peter has the chat records from that month.
@Shai_Schechter got a pic of the board and source files so we can take a look?
+Peter van der Walt I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion so quickly. If the computer recognizes the board (does the flash drive show up?) then it could be software. I had to tell Repetier Host to not reset on connect. Does cura have such a function? Other software, like pronterface, works as is. Try that and everything else Peter said a few posts up.
One of the users tried Cura and pronterface. It’s a hit and miss. Sometimes it connects, sometimes it doesn’t. The electronics are not the problem because this is a Windows 10 specific issue. All of our other users that have other operating systems such as windows 7, 8, mac, etc… don’t have this issue.
+Peter van der Walt I’m not sure you’re understanding… it’s not the board 
I’ve had at least 10 users who reported issues with Windows 10 connectivity. When they try another computer it does work. This issue is very specific to windows 10. I’m not sure if it’s Cura or the firmware or what’s causing it. But it’s not the board.
So going back to what I was saying, does Cura have a reset on connect setting and can it be disabled? Also do the baud rates match up between what is in the config file and in Cura settings?
@Shai_Schechter It has something to do with Windows 10’s driver, I have the same issue on windows 10. However,It worked fine when I bridged the usb port to a virtual machine and Windows 10 as the host and run Cura/ pronterface/Repetier over there on VM’s Ubuntu.
+Peter van der Walt I talked about this with @Shai_Schechter already, we have rare win10 complaints, boards in question work with other OSes/machines also on win10, it’s a win10 driver bug issue.
It would be interesting to see if Marlin or other firmwares have this issue just to compare side by side the statistics. I personally hate Marlin after using it for a few years now, but would like to compare.
I think it’s a microsoft issue. I’m going to see if we can reach out to someone there as I know they have a small group of engineers who work on 3d printing drivers… or maybe they dropped support for it, don’t remember.
@Shai_Schechter There is a driver difference there ( CDC/ACM I think ) so it’s possible that’d have an impact.
We’re also seeing quite some reports for Ultimaker 2 firmware update problems on Windows 10. (which uses the USB driver)
So this problem isn’t Cura specific, when I looked into it, the driver in windows seems to had some serious timing issues when opening the port.
@Daid_Braam Are you saying this is a Microsoft issue? So is there any sort of possible fix for this? Considering the new Cura doesn’t have support for Delta, companies like us are stuck with the older version. I know you mentioned that this isn’t Cura specific - can you suggest anything on how to go forward with this issue?
@Shai_Schechter the anniversary update seems to improve the scenario. But I don’t know if all the problems are gone.
@Jaime_van_Kessel I thought Cura 2 had Delta printer support?
@Daid_Braam We and our customers are stuck on 15.04.6 because the new Cura doesn’t have delta support. Is there any way we can help you to incorporate delta support? I think the only thing missing is to make the bed round without using “disallowed area” inside a square box as I have read on your forums. Otherwise you end up with a circle inside of a box.