I know I’ve been slightly quiet on here recently. You would’ve thought with all this lockdown going on that I’d have more time to get all my projects sorted but unfortunately that isn’t the case.

I just wanted to bring to people’s attention that it’s now possible to run an SKR v1.4 (or SKR v1.3 for that matter) with RepRapFirmware and an SBC attached. This setup emulates the newer duet 3 setup (minus the expandability of expansion and toolboards).

What do you get from running this setup? Well, firstly you get a faster connection to the DWC (RepRapFirmware web interface). Although the SKR with an ESP8266 attached is more than functional, if you’re uploading a large gcode file it can take a while. You also get the ability to connect to the setup using ethernet rather than wifi. Finally, as the platform matures, there will be the ability to use plugins.

As with adding an ESP8266 to the SKR v1.4, some resistors etc are required. All the information can be found on the LPC-RRF wiki.

Like any good maker, I like to buy the cheapest version of something that I can. If buying from two sources gets me something a few £s cheaper then thats what I’ll do.

What did I order?

I ordered an SKR v1.4 turbo (which has a 120Mhz processor compared to the standard 100Mhz processor) and 5 x Fysetc TMC2209 v3. Buying this combination saved me around £5, which in my eyes was worth it.

Whats the problem?

What I didn’t realise is that Fysetc had changed the pinout of the TMC2209 v3 from the earlier versions. This means that the jumper settings detailed on the SKR v1.4 page on aliexpress do not work. This results in a TMC connection error in Marlin and the inability to set the steps, current or use sensorless homing (which is a gimmick I know).

So what now?

Luckily I was able to find a fix for the issue. Even better is that no soldering or modification of the driver is required.

All that’s needed is to add the jumpers as shown (look for the green box) underneath each driver

No more TMC connection errors.