I was wondering if you can load cura le onto a standalone arduino mega?
I am an habitual tinkerer and designer of “additions” in many fields… I want opinion on whether you can program cura le onto a mega and use it to test add-ons? e.g new extruder, temperature monitor, video control etc. to make sure they work and not clash.
the mega will have small steppers, switches, stops etc to mimic the taz (eg 6 or pro) - I’d use a duplicate Rambo but I’m not that rich.
The control board inside the printers (an Arduino compatible board) just runs Marlin firmware (that’s how it interprets the G-code).
Cura is a “slicer”. It converts the 3D meshed geometry file (typically a “.STL” or “.OBJ”, or “.3FM” file) into G-code so that you can send it to the printer (which is running Marline).
The Arduino in the printer doesn’t have nearly enough memory or processing power to run the Cura slicing software (or any slicing software).
As @Iggy points out… if you want something that can run Cura but don’t want to use a laptop or desktop computer (it will run on Windows, Mac, or Linux) then you can use a Raspberry Pi. I would suggest a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB RAM (minimum RAM should be 2GB … I don’t think I’d try to run it on a 1GB Raspberry Pi).
As I check the memory utilization of Cura on my mac… (which is a Unix OS) it’s using about 1.5GB RAM for just that application. I’d expect it to be similar on the Pi (although the Mac is running 64bit … it might be a little smaller on the Pi because that will be 32bit.)
my error on cura… I was a hardware engineer and taught binary… I’ve never worked on Microboards or their software.
what I would like to do is equip an arduino mega so that I can test add-ons and customised equipment without risking my taz6
the mega has steppers, servos,sensors etc to imitate the taz but I am trying to work out the software or firmware so that it can test stuff that might end up on a taz… or just tested to destruction.