Since RPI 4 are hard to get, we should all work to make Klipper running on other SBC

General Discussion
1

There are so many SIngleBoardComputer way more powerful than RPI 4 and way more available, at very good price. They can run many brothers of raspbian ( Raspberry Pi OS ) like UBUNTU, and because I am a newbie to linux, I do not know what are the main issues, I have 43 years of experience in electronics and programming, but alone in a new system, will take me eternity to learn and make everything works. I already modified the utility “make menuconfig” and added upcoming MCU, with their respective properties like bootloader offset etc, in the STM32 section…

Is there a few volunteers to take up the challenge…

PS. The talented and productive one may have a gift from Santa ! ( To start, probably the hardware to develop! and keep for their personal use after…)

We are currently a team of 2, me in Montreal, and one in Illinois…

We have so much to do, we need help, but we have the the tools to make it work… ( $$$$ )

I need experienced C/C++ programmers familiar with STM32 mcu, configuration of the mcu with STM application CubeMX… We are writing our own bootloader… etc…

And we are working with the newest MCU, still not used by the industry… And really want to use Klipper as the firmware… a lot of fun in front of us !

So we need to make a working development solution with VS code, klipper , on a never used MCU with a never used Linux board (but very powerful!)

If you want to make a visit in the Future, jump in our DOLOREAN !!!

All opinions, comments, positive or negative about all that, are welcome!!!

Daniel Massicotte, the crazy monkey!

2

WRT the SBC you might want to refer to General re lack of pi's - #4 by Sineos

3

I think you’ve missed your window of opportunity.

Production of rPis is ramping up and I’m seeing more available and prices starting to drop (especially on the rPi 4B - it’s pricing is down 10% on AliExpress over the last month). I would expect that in six months you’ll see rPis at the same availability and price point you did before Covid.

You seem to be focused on the STM32 as a replacement and, while I don’t know the entire family as well as I do for NXP products, I suspect that there aren’t part numbers in the line that can provide the same performance as the Broadcom processors used on the rPi and I would think there are the same supply issues as other chips which means that you wouldn’t be able to manufacture the 100ks needed to be a credible alternative.

If you were starting this a year ago, I would encourage a project like this as last fall was when it was clear that deliveries of MCU silicon was well behind predictions but now things are starting to come together I think you’ll have a hard time coming up with something that is competitive to the rPi products.

Sorry.

4

Most of the thithings written in this message are non sense…

as a good exemple… “I think you’ll have a hard time coming up with something that is competitive to the rPi products.”

Already solved… with a quadcore CPU, with FPU, GPU and NPU, ssd storage…

And we do not want to compete with RPI or broadcom, we just want to use something else, and never have to ear those name again. Period…

I lose precious time answering , because you do not understand what I do…

And for the IC shortage, I have no problem getting whatever I need in huge quanties…

SORRY for the ones that can’t

back to my project…

5

Many SBCs are available at reasonable prices right now. Some even come with prebuilt images that include Klipper, and others run some form of armbian. I personally run a production printer on a CB1. It prints at least 8 hours every day, sometimes 16 hours with no issues. I know others run Klipper on Orange Pis or other inexpensive general purpose SBCs. None of these require hardware or software development. Just install Klipper on the provided image.

6

Hello,
Have you heard about Orange Pi? Is is (always was) much cheaper than rPi ! And the good news is Klipper runs on it without issues!

7

Of course, I know the Orange PI, but I didn’t know that Kipper was able to runs on it without problems,
Thanks for the info, always good to have extra solutions, but we are already working with another board.

:+1:

8

I’m running it on an Orange Pi Zero for my KP3S.