We have established that you can access the files on the Smoothieboard's SD card via the USB connection.
This USB connection also has a Serial interface. This is used to control the board.
The host program ( control interface on your computer ) uses the Serial interface to send commands and G-Codes to your Smoothieboard.
In this step, we check in this serial interface is working correctly.
Step 1 :Â Install Pronterface
We will be using Pronterface to test the serial interface.
Make sure you use Pronterface and not another host program that you might prefer, for this ( when doing diagnostics like this it's important to maintain a controlled situation ).
You can find instructions on installing Pronterface here
Step 2 :Â Plug in the board
Connect the USB cable to your Smoothieboard, and to your computer's USBÂ port.
Step 3 :Â Attempt to connect
Launch Pronterface, then follow this procedure :
- Click on Port, this refreshes the list of boards connected to the computer
- Select your board in the drop-down menu next to the Port button. This can be something like /dev/ttyACM0 on a Linux machine, or COM1 on a Windows machine
- You do not need to set a baud rate, Smoothie will use the fastest speed possible over USB, and any baud rate setting is ignored.
- Click on Connect
If everything works correctly, the Pronterface log panel on the right, should show something like :
Connecting... Printer is now online.
If this is what you see, click on Yes
If you see something else, for example :
Serial error: could not open port /dev/ttyACM0: [[Errno|2]] No such file or directory: '/dev/ttyACM0'
, click on No
