Hello, my lulzbot mini has been sitting around for a few years and will no longer connect to the cura lulzbot software. Before abandoning it in my garage, I had it set up with Octoprint, and it worked fine. I have tried absolutely everything to get it to connect (baud rate, com port, reinstall cura, clear cache), but it still gives me the (cannot connect to printer) error. I can’t flash new firmware without connecting to the printer in the first place, and I can’t seem to get the Arduino IDE method to work. Would buying a new board fix this issue?
Does your computer register that a com port is connected when you plug it in? You may have to watch in device manager and manually select that com port in Cura. If the computer isn’t registering a new COM port when you plug it in, there’s no need to try anything in Cura.
You didn’t mention trying a different PC, or USB cable, so give that a try first.
A new board would fix the problem, if the problem is the board, but if it’s with the cable or your PC, it will not.
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Yep different computer worked, turns out my USB drivers needed a reinstall. Thanks!
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A note for others in the future that might happen upon this thread with Mini V1 flashing issues:
Some Mini 1 printers with very old firmware only connect at 115200 baud. So you have to change Cura to 115200 in the machine settings, flash new firmware, then switch Cura back to 250000.
You do NOT need to get Cura LE version 3 to connect to the printer before flashing firmware. The purpose of the connect in Cura is to get Cura to connect and communicate with the Marlin firmware. When you flash firmware, Cura LE runs a separate flashing process in the background that connects directly to the bootloader on the board. This is independent of the normal operation of Cura and Marlin, and therefore, getting Cura to connect to Marlin is not necessary. Just go straight to the firmware update and click auto update and it might work fine even if Cura won’t connect to Marlin.
I believe work is being done on Cura 4 Lulzbot Edition to make the flashing process a bit more intelligent about how firmware updates are done so this might not be the case with Cura 4 LE in the future.
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How do you change the baud? I have check the printers machine settings and the starting g-code but im starting to think im looking in the wrong place. Im using Cura LE 4.13.3
In Cura LE 4.13 it should be on the machine settings page, in the space between the Printhead Settings and the End G-code below. And it was there when I had an older beta version of Cura LE 4.13, but I just upgraded to Cura LE 4.13.4 and it doesn’t appear there. I don’t know if it was removed for some reason, moved somewhere else, or there is a bug causing it to not show. I’ll investigate further tomorrow…
So here’s the story. The port selection and baud rate were there in Cura LE 4.13 in some of the beta versions but they weren’t functional, because the printer connection code was rewritten to monitor all USB devices connecting and automatically detect what port your printer connects on. When you try to connect, it cycles through different baud rates and retries to connect if it can’t connect at the default of 250000. So theoretically, you shouldn’t need to select a com port and baud rate in Cura LE 4.13.
If this is not working for some reason, I suppose you could install Cura LE 3.6 and use that to upgrade the firmware.
Thanks for your help, Ill give that a go over the weekend