Originally shared by Colin Edwards I've gotten Bot Cubed to the point where it

Originally shared by Colin Edwards

I’ve gotten Bot Cubed to the point where it can run do an entire print with Gcode.

I’m posting an APK for those who would like to test it. That said, this is alpha software and it will probably crash, not cooperate, etc.
You need a device running at least 3.1 that can do USB host mode. If there are a lot of users who want this to work on older versions of Android, I’ll look into integrating ioio or another solution.
It should be as simple as hooking up directly to your printer over USB with a usb on the go cable and then clicking “Connect” in the app.

I have the source hosted on GitHub for those who want to tinker, submit pull requests or report bugs.

I’ve installed this on my ASUS Transformer running stock, rooted ICS. Made a quick gcode and popped it onto the tablet’s SD card.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

  1. If I wait for the printer to be ready before plugging it in, and have a freshly cleared app (not force close or clear data; just swiping it away from the recent app picker), it will connect and I can control it using the buttons. It appears there’s a fixed speed for axes moving, which I’m betting was intentional.

  2. If I load my gcode file it will appear to load up just fine. The buttons will still be working fine.

  3. If I click the start print button, the gcode will scale to my first or second line and it’ll hang. The printer is now unresponsive to the app, and printing will not begin (normally I’d expect it to home all axes then wait to heat at this point). Only swiping away the app + power cycling the printer will restore things back to operation.

Tests on my Galaxy Nexus (toro) running a 4.2 ROM yielded nearly identical results. Sometimes it had trouble finding the printer, but my OTG cable is pretty crumby so it may have just had a poor connection .

Any other data I could provide to you that would be helpful? Would you want me to send you a logcat or anything like that?

Which firmware are you using?

Marlin

I’ll load that up on my printer and see if I run into any issues. I’ve only tested this with repetier. Oh, can you send me the gcode that you generated too?

Also if you click on the radio buttons below the jog buttons you can change the move speed.

<3 – awesome stuff!

I, and many others at my lab also use Marlin, so I hope those issues are fixed soon. I haven’t heard any “omg you must switch” positives to repetier firmware to ever switch. Does it have any must-have features?

I mainly installed it because I really liked the Repetier host software. It does have a binary communication protocol that is supposed to speed up communication, but I haven’t noticed a difference.

Repetier Host works with Marlin too. Were you able to replicate the problems that others experienced?

I haven’t gotten a change to put Marlin on my printer yet. I’ll probably look into it later tonight though.

@ThantiK I’ve fixed the marlin issues if you want to give it another try. https://www.dropbox.com/s/m3tnxnat6ne95hh/BotCubed-1.0-SNAPSHOT.apk