Is it possible to connect over uart VIA a Pi Pico

General Discussion
1

Basic Information:

Printer Model: Ender 3 v2
MCU / Printerboard: Creality 4.2.2
klippy.log

hello all, as per the title really.

the usb port on my board is starting to get a little worn/loose and i am thinking about using PB10/PB11 via the screen ribbon, however the only (usable) Pi i have is a pico - klipper is running inside a vm on my home server through a pcie passthrough usb card.

i have a pico attached to the system controlling klipper for input shaping (and soon fan control) and i was wondering if it is possible to connect via the usb port on the pico through uart through the display ribbon?

if not, i will consider other options.
thanks in advance.

2

You could go the much easier route of getting a small CH340 breakout board that converts UART to USB directly.

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Might be possible but it is neither recommended nor supported.

Klipper relies on a low latency and stable connection between the host and the printer board.

There are reports that users have pushed this connection over ethernet via socat and there is a USB to serial bridge firmware for the Pico: GitHub - Noltari/pico-uart-bridge: Raspberry Pi Pico UART-USB bridge

I never felt the urge to try this so YMMV.

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4

i did find those on amazon, i shall bare those in mind incase the usb connection becomes too unreliable.

thank you for a clear and concise explanation for why this might not be a good idea.

part of the reason was to try and “gain” a usb port on the host, but it looks like any solution other than moving to a native pi3/4 would be sub-optimal or just plain bad.

thankyou for your answers :slightly_smiling_face:

5

Well, out of the same reason you can consider yourself lucky that Klipper is working in a VM. Most of the time it does not. See Running Klipper in a Virtual Machine (VM)

Now putting in another “layer of creativity” might be pushing ones luck a bit too far.

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