Smoothie IRC Channel

IRC Chat

IRC, or “Internet Relay Chat”, is a nice way to chat directly with other community members, and get answers faster than using forums or mailing lists.

Before you use Smoothie’s IRC channel, please read the following advice:

Help Guidelines

General advice when asking for help from the Smoothieware community.

Read These Guidelines Before Asking for Help

Following these guidelines will help you get faster and better answers to your questions. It shows respect for the volunteers who help support the project.

Before You Ask

  • Please read the Troubleshooting section before you ask for help, in case your question is answered there.

  • A lot of questions have already been asked in the past. It might be worth it searching the forum for an answer to your question. The wiki may also have the answer you are searching for.

  • Before posting about your problem, please make sure you are using the latest firmware and config, as well as the latest version of your host software.

When Posting Your Question

  • Please mention your board type, OS, machine type, and any other useful information.

  • Always include your configuration file. It’s likely if you don’t post your configuration file, you will be asked for it, so save everyone (including you) some time and just post your config file right away with your first post.

  • NEVER paste the config directly in the forum. Instead, paste it to Pastebin, and share the link in the forum. This keeps posts clean and readable.

  • If your problem has anything to do with files or config not being taken into account, please format your SD card, start with a fresh config file example and most recent firmware and port your config over, then try again.

Note About MKS and AZSMZ Boards

If you are using a MKS or an AZSMZ board, please note that those boards are toxic to the community and project.

As such, we respectfully request that you first contact the seller for help before asking in the forum or anywhere else in the community.

Community members generally do not want to help companies that hurt the project we are all building. Please read this explanation before posting.

Using Pastebin

Instead of pasting your full configuration file or large portions of it, you can go to the Pastebin.com website.

There you can post your config options, submit, and get a sharable link.

You can then give us your link instead of the configuration options. This is cleaner and easier for the persons trying to help you.

Alternatively, you can use the proper tags to “pack” your config file in a way where it is not completely displayed and users have to “expand” it, see forum formatting documentation.

Reporting Bugs

If you have discovered a bug (and only if you have discovered a bug), you can report it as an “issue” on GitHub so the developers know about it and volunteers can try to work on solving it.

Before posting an issue please read these guidelines.

IRC-specific recommendations

  • Do not ask if you can ask for help, or ask if anyone is around, just ask your question.
  • Stay around until somebody answers, some times are more active than others, if you stick around somebody will maybe answer you an hour from now.
  • Be polite: Remember you are talking to volunteers who could be having a beer with their friends but are here helping you instead.
  • Be precise: The more information you give, and the more clearly you give it, the better others will be able to help you.
  • Reading documentation is not mean: If somebody tells you to read the documentation, they are not being mean to you, they are just pointing out that your question is answered in the documentation, and that it is more fair for you to read your answer there, than for them to help you when that time could be instead spent helping somebody whose question is not answered in the documentation.
  • Don't repeat: People can read your question even long after you have asked it, repeating it will only cause others to be annoyed.
  • Stay on the channel and help others, that's how we build a friendly community in which it is easy to get help.
  • Improve the documentation: If your question was not answered in the documentation, add it to the documentation: the documentation is a wiki anyone can edit, please help us make it more complete.

Connecting

Smoothie’s room is on the Libera IRC server, the channel is: #smoothieware (moved there from its historical home at Freenode after trouble)

If you don’t have an IRC client, you can use the web-based one here

Please note you can also get help on more general 3D printing topics in the #reprap channel, on the same server.

For Smoothie development discussion, you can also join the #smoothiedev channel.

Web Client

If you do not wish to install a desktop IRC client, you can alternatively use a web-based IRC client.

There are several you can find online, what is important is that you connect to the irc.libera.chat server, with the port 6697, and enter the channel #smoothieware

Here is a direct link that should allow you to enter this configuration using the KiwiIRC web-based client, right from your browser or Libera’s own WebChat.