Sonic Pad - Mainline Klipper

General Discussion
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I’m making this post to share some progress that has been made to install mainline Klipper (and fluidd, mainsail, moonraker, klipperscreen, etc) to the Creality Sonic Pad

Some background:

The Sonic Pad runs Tina Linux, a forked version from Allwinner of OpenWRT, with old versions of Klipper, Moonraker, Mainsail and Fluidd.

In my experience it is very hard to update each component and even thought it can be possible, the frontend for the display fluidd-pad is tightly couple with their special forks of the components.

Creality recently published the source code of their Sonic Pad (which you can find it here) but still, no easy way to update the components since they are shared as prebuilt packages; Instructions for compiling/packaging those packages are missing and sources for fluidd-pad are nowhere to be seen.

The easier solution to use mainline repos was to use a different distro.

The solution?

Replacing the entire rootfs with a Debian distro. Fortunately, the kernel used in the Sonic Pad allow us to boot into Debian 10 with practically no changes. Only exception, we still have to create an AllWinner img (uboot+kernel+rootfs) to flash the rootfs.

it is more than possible to flash only the rootfs using fastboot or integrating a Debian rootfs into Tina SDK, but my Chinese skills are nonexistent, so I decided to replace the compiled rootfs just before packing all together.

I’ve detailed in my Github repo all the steps I took to modify the Tina enviroment, create a basic Debian Buster rootfs and install mainline Klipper & friends: Jpe230/SonicPad-Debian: Port of Debian for the SonicPad (Allwinner R818) (github.com).

While certainly my repo isn’t an “easy to follow” guide, I’m hopeful that someone can take these building blocks and streamline the process!

Happy hacking!

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Nice work! Thanks for sharing.
But honestly, this effort leads the whole idea of the Sonic Pad ad absurdum.
For me, it remains an overpriced piece of junk.

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I don’t know if I would agree with that sentiment. One of the other forums I’m on is paid for by a (Canadian) retailer who is actively selling the Sonic Pad. They used to have a ridiculous disclaimer pop up when you looked at the product on their web page (including saying that they would help Sonic Pad owners set up the device at $140/hr), now it’s just a warning in red text (which apparently comes up in the preview below):

https://3dprintingcanada.com/products/official-creality-sonic-pad

I’ve helped a number of people to get the hardware working and there are a lot of cases where it just simply don’t work - largely because of the version of Klipper Creality is using but there also seems to be issues with how the USB ports were implemented. Being able to install genuine Klipper (and Moonraker, Mainsail/Fluidd) on the Sonic Pad would eliminate a large number of the cases where is “simply don’t work” and would probably get more people seeing Klipper as the way to go.

For me, it remains an overpriced piece of junk.

I don’t know if I quite agree with that either. Yes it’s more expensive than a currently sourced Raspberry Pi 4B and 7" touch panel but it brings everything together in one neat package. Now having said that, there does seem to be issues with how the USB ports are implemented (as noted above) but it has the capability of being a usable device and has the Creality brand name attached to it (which some people take as gold).

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Well, nobody has to agree with my opinion for that matter.

  • Having to go to great lengths, involving Linux admin knowledge to get the Sonic Pad in an usable state makes the whole concept absurd in my eyes
  • Having to do this at the price they call for this even more so
  • From the looks of it they also “cloned” KlipperScreen but did not make it transparent. If this is true, it would even violate the license
  • The Bigtreetech Pad 7 offers the same concept without all this crap around it at about 60% of the price
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If BTT does not establish a good forum for the owners, it will stay a… see quote below.

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I basically agree with your opinions but there are a lot of Sonic Pads out there and even with the 3D Printing Canada disclaimer they are still being promoted - apparently Creality is a recognized quality brand and people see it’s failings as that of Klipper, not of the product. This is amazing to me because I see about 30% of the time somebody is trying to connect a Sonic Pad to Creality printer (usually an Ender 3) they can never get it working.

Being able to point to how to use genuine Klipper on the Sonic Pad is a positive and the work that’s being put into it is appreciated.

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I agree and said exactly this in my first post.
Being forced to do it, loosing warranty and running the risk to (soft-)bricking it still makes the whole thing a piece of junk and totally contradicts the idea of it: A one-stop solution for people searching for a Klipper plug’n’play solution.

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I miss the “open source” idea. Good products (Sonic Pad and BTT Pad 7), but depending on too much other developments (Klipper and everything else…)
Where are schematics and other infos? Of course, they don’t want to be copied. Kind of a jam.
No clue, how to make IP safe in China.

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BTT has very good documentation on their GH, and they’ve contributed a bunch of code back to mainline Klipper. This is why I converted all my printers to BTT hardware, and I will continue supporting them with my money.

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I kind of miss this point. What do you want to do with the schematic of a LCD or some compute module? In the end, it is some sort of standard hardware that you can stick together.
Apart from this: https://github.com/bigtreetech/Pad7/tree/master/Hardware

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Oh, last time (one or two month ago) I was looking there, there were no schematics. Good!

? Plug and pray?

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Both the Sonic Pad and Pad 7 are an LCD display piggybacked on a SBC and put into a box. Apart from maybe the RPis most SBC are not open source and LCD displays with their controllers even less so.

So, not sure what you are asking for here. The fact that BTT even documents this via a publicly available schematic can be considered outstanding.

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I didn’t ask anything. Just used “?”. I’m out of this conversation. Thank you all.

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Not sure I believe you. BTT has posted schematics for all of its boards for several years now, usually right around the time the hardware goes on sale.

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Sorry, I don’t think I’m a liar. But that’s it!

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@jpe230 See Creality Sonic Pad and Alternatives

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Schematics are part of a product’s documentation package. This is especially important in the 3D printer space where the product volume is good but not high enough to warrant providing and maintaining absolutely correct documentation along with user help videos. BTT does a very good job but they’re very much in a mode of getting the product out and moving on to the next product.

What I usually look for in schematics is an understanding of the current limits for things like the heater bed MOSFET, pwoer supply limitations, actual pin numbers (and their characteristics) LCD connections (and whether or not they’re valid), USB connections and USB wiring (protection and power sourcing/sinking capability) and so on. As a design engineer, I always want to see how somebody else has designed a circuit and what parts they use.

I know the whole idea of the Sonic Pad is plug and play but it isn’t, the documentation is poor to fair and certain aspects of it are substandard. Having schematics would make debugging a new printer connection easier.

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Thanks for the shoutout!

I do agree with the disclaimers made in the post, hopefully someone can come with a better process :slight_smile:

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I couldn’t find traces of KlipperScreen anywhere, their frontend for the screen looks like it was based in Fluidd and then heavily modified to resemble KlipperScreen. QT is used to wrap the webpage.

That doesn’t eliminate the main problem: sources are missing and the license of fluidd was violated.

I’m not trying to defend Creality or anything, just trying to clear some misconceptions I’ve been hearing :stuck_out_tongue:

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I like that, but there is too little help from Creality and BTT for such expensive devices! Can’t be right, that you do the development/debugging/etc…

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