Repetier Host doesn't communicate anymore

Last night I had a small problem that snowballed;

My extruder stepper wasn't turning, though it was working the day before. I figured it's probably a loose connection, so I shut everything down, checked the plug at the RAMPS board. Still no extruder.

Now here's where the fun begins;

I decided I would try swapping out the stepper driver with a spare I had lying around. I plugged it in... err, backwards. Went from DRV8825 to A4988 and forgot that the pot is on the other end. DOH! After powering up and not getting any extruder action I noticed my error and tried another stepper driver. However, my RH stopped talking to the control board. By that I mean it would connect but it says "1 Command Waiting" and nothing else will work. Thinking I really screwed the works, I swapped out the Arduino, loaded the firmware I've been using for the last several months, fired it up and still got the same message. I then swapped out the entire assembly, arduino, RAMPS, drivers... Same thing. I swapped USB ports, nothing changed. I had a brief glimmer of hope, I plugged into the board on my latest build (which isn't finished being wired) and RH connected and said "Idle" and gave extruder and bed temps. Woohoo! I moved the whole works over to my other machine, plugged in the same USB cable... and "1 Command Waiting"! Argh!

I went into the Printer settings and tried disabling the Reset on Connect. Nope. I uninstalled, including the registry, and re-installed RH. Nope.

I've swapped and reloaded firmware on 4 different arduinos, tried combinations of old RAMPS boards on new arduinos, vice versa, and in all cases I get "1 Command Waiting".

I'm a bit baffled by what's going on here. Any ideas?

I'm using RH 1.0.6.

Thanks,
Gyv

I forgot to mention, in one of my many attempts, it did actually connect but only for a few seconds before disconnecting. I didn't see any error codes in the log, that I recall.

I reflashed the firmware with the change for EEPROM from 1 to 2. It worked.... for about 2 minutes. I was able to home once, then I homed Z and the endstop LED didn't light up, and kept driving the hot end down, so I hit emergency stop. I was able to reconnect, did an M119 and all endstops reported L, I pressed the Z endstop and it reported H, even though the LED wasn't lit. I powered cycled everything, again. The Z endstop LED comes on again, but the printer won't connect. Back to where I started.

With Reset on Connect disabled I get: 16:47:25.208 : w-Hx?,7mx?,7Mx?,7mhx?MHx??N~?|??H7Mx??N~?|??H7Mx??n?6?~\H?}M?V?I?N?6?>Q\H?M??I?N?v?~Q|H?]
With it set to DTR low - high - low I get: 16:48:38.421 : No start signal detected - forcing start

And of course the "1 Command Waiting".

This has been very frustrating. I don't want to bash Repetier for their work, but I've been having some real connection problems with the host lately, with the same settings I used for months, no, years. It seems sporadic and you never know when it's going to happen. I've used Repetier for almost 3 years now without any problems and all of a sudden, as soon as I update to the latest build, this happens. I might try going back to 0.95F or 1.0.1 and see if that changes anything.

Tried re-installing 0.95F, that didn't do it. Re-loaded firmware starting from scratch, re-installed RH 1.0.6, and again it worked for about 2 minutes, but then Z stopped responding. Shut it all down and tried a new stepper driver. When I tried to reconnect I got the "1 command waiting" and "no start signal detected - forcing start".

Looking at my Windows update history I did get a handful of updates and I'm wondering if that's the issue. I'm going to try uninstalling them and see how that goes.

Other than that I'm really at a loss as to what I can try next.

The strange part is that it worked for 2 minutes. That means your settings were correct. Reinstalling on windows side should not change anything in this case.

With such problems always enable logging to see what is going on.

Your errors x waiting.. mean there is no response from firmware. Hitting reset on board should at least show up "start" if not firmware has the hang.

One thing that can be really hard is a watchdog loop preventing firmware form starting up. Have you compiled firmware with watchdog enabled? If yes, the big question remaining is why z moves can enable watchdog.

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I've rebuilt the firmware from the configurator with and without using any options, no watchdog and didn't even change steps. Still nothing. Hitting the reset button doesn't change anything in the log, it still says "no start signal detected - forcing start" without updating. I removed all windows updates going back to before I started having problems. And as I've said before, I've tried connecting several different arduinos.

If you have set 115200 baud you can also use arduino ide serial console to see if any communication goes on.

Have you tried other usb ports in case the usb port on your pc is defect. I also had an arduino where I had blown the usb connector, but having the same problem with several arduinos makes it unlikely that it is the arduino end.

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Repetier-Software - the home of Repetier-Host (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) and Repetier-Firmware.
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Opened Serial Monitor and get:

n&þlq€_r6ìOéü6:Й~r¢ˆ”Jx¹úúúúúJjúúúúúJjúúúúúJ•úúúúúJjúúúúúJjúúúúúJjúúúúúJ•úúúúú:øMpˆöl~°_b'!AtlÌ_6ìMS+ˆÐ#ayAŸ?`mP‹È}Ba~B¯ì8›
bÐNaðMüH0]@Pš^áqü.þ'?ø_6ì_6ì

I get a new character or three about every second. So, it's talking, but I still get the "1 command waiting" and the "No start signal detected - forcing start" in the RH log.

I'm running Win 7 64bit, but I tried it on an old laptop with Vista 32, and I'm getting the same thing. I've tried different cables, different USB ports on the front and the back. There has to be some setting somewhere that I'm overlooking. I've never had this kind of trouble before.

Funny, that I had just programmed a board for a friend with the same firmware I've been running for years and it's working great for him, just before my printer died.

So, I don't know why it worked, but I flashed the original build of my firmware that was working a couple weeks ago (and suddenly stopped), rebooted everything... AND IT WORKS! I'm printing as I write this.

Boy, am I glad that's over... knock wood, cross fingers. I really wish I knew what the issue was. This is a different board, so maybe I'll reload the firmware on the old board and see if it plays nice.

Spoke too soon. After my print finished, and a lovely print it was, I clicked disconnect and tried reconnecting and I got the "1 command waiting" again.

Tried a reboot of the entire system, tried connecting, hit reset on control board, tried connecting again, nothing, again. I'm convinced there is an issue with the host software not wanting to talk to the firmware unless it's in the mood. The issue isn't in the firmware nor the hardware.

I shouldn't have disconnected after that print, but I wanted to know if the connection was stable. I can't have intermittent functionality.

I guess we should go back to arduino serial monitor. If you get every second a few chars it is the firmware sending

wait

and since they don't look like wait the serial baudrate compiled (or from eeprom) is different then the one set in serial console (which starts with 9600 baud so you need to change this). So please change eeprom mode and set baudrate to 115200 and retry that and then when you see "wait" continue with the host, which then should also work. But as long a sit gets garbish it also not understand.

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Out of curiosity, what does "wait" look like?

Ok, so I derped pretty hard last night. After I reloaded the firmware last night I imported the EEPROM settings and failed to notice in those settings the baudrate was changed to 250000, and I failed to make the change in the printer settings. I double checked it tonight and that was the issue. Again, all is better. Sorry.