Which development board should I buy as an investment?

Hi all! This is my first post here. I'm very attracted by the reprap project but I have a very limited budget and also I'm not completely sure I'll ever assemble a fully working reprap
So I would like to initially buy a development board and use it for other projects but with the possibility, when the time will come, to use it as the base for the reprap electronics.

So, I searched the internet and found this three alternatives:

- Arduino Mega
- Sanguino
- Papilio (http://papilio.cc)

The last is a FPGA based development board that can emulate the Arduino platform so it can run sketches written for Arduino. But I'm not totally sure it can be used to drive a reprap. Do you know?

They don't cost too much so the budget should not make any difference.
Many thanks for your help!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2012 05:23PM by oniric.

Obviously, your choice should depend on what you want to develop. Also, why you want to develop. RepRap Electronics are pretty finished designs, all further enhancements are either to be done in firmware, add new, non-cruicial features or replace existing features. They work well for all known basic tasks.

Arduinos and similars are nice, but they don't feature stepper drivers, thermistor inputs, heater outputs. If you add these, you get what we already have.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Personally I'd say RAMPS would the best if you want to be able to use the Mega (1280 or 2560) board for multiple applications.

You could reuse the chips from Sanguinololu and possibly some of the Gen x models, but you'd also need to strip down the usb components or buy/build a circuit which has, in order to make use of the chip.

Most of the Gen x boards also have intergrated stepper drivers which mean they would be a pain to reuse.

It costs a big issue its worth thinking about making a RepStrap, nopheads Mendel90 should cost less then a Prusa.

---

My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

I simply want to get the best from my money. I saw that RAMPS electronic for example requires an Arduino Mega as the base. So it would be quite a useful investment to buy one so,in the future, I could attach RAMPS to it. At the same time Papilio can emulate an Arduino Mega board so maybe I can attach RAMPS to it too?

Building a RepRap is my final goal, in the meantime I would like to have some fun with microcontrollers or such, trying new things, building know-how about this subject.

I don't know if papillio can run reprap firmware, but I do know its not pin compatible with the mega. You may be able to attach a RAMPS to it somehow, but its not going to slot in place. Id say to buy the mega unless you really want to play with an FPGA.

Ok, so now I'm probably going towards RAMPS with Arduino MEGA, so in the mean time I can play a little with it It's probably the easiest solution for a noob like me! FPGA could be cool but I need community support to make this project! ^^' So better stay with RAMPS! Thank you!

Hi,i think this s3c6410 board may fit what need www.developmentboard.net called tenbyten6410,i just bought it few days ago, now it working perfact in our project. i hope it working on your project as good as in my .

Quote

Hi,i think this s3c6410 board may fit what need www.developmentboard.net called tenbyten6410,i just bought it few days ago, now it working perfact in our project. i hope it working on your project as good as in my .

Spammers!

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Traumflug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi,i think this s3c6410 board may fit what need
> www.developmentboard.net called tenbyten6410,i
> just bought it few days ago, now it working
> perfact in our project. i hope it working on your
> project as good as in my .
>
> Spammers!

Yes, but in topic. I mean, at least, they are not trying to sell us shoes

---

Most of my technical comments should be correct, but is THIS one ?
Anyway, as a rule of thumb, always double check what people write.

IMHO the FPGA could be used for more than just a controller interface and could be more rewarding on many of other projects that take more processing power, it would be used for being a host and controller all in one with the proper sheilds it can have vga output and keyboard/mouse interface. Get ready to program and design electronics. You could run a tiny version of linux on that board and have it do all of the work along with a display! Seperately it even will emulate arduino but you would have to build your own control sheild and interface for everything, but I doubt that would work well with the setup described above. Do you know how to etch circuit boards? BUT! The arduino would be the easier to start with and have the larger easier to learn from user base with plenty of opensource sketches. Plenty of support on arduino based platforms (sanguino is fairly similar in design). Plenty existing hardware support is always a plus unless you want to build everything from scratch.

WildBill Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> IMHO the FPGA could be used for more than just a
> controller interface and could be more rewarding
> on many of other projects that take more
> processing power, it would be used for being a
> host and controller all in one with the proper
> sheilds it can have vga output and keyboard/mouse
> interface.

Integrated hardware STL slicer?

(not it, by the way. )