BTT Octopus pro - update bootloader?

[majic79]

I'm having real problems with my BTT Octopus Pro (came with my Formbot trident kit). I managed to get it to accept a flash update over SD card once and since then it's been nothing but trouble. I'm considering trying to load my programmer onto it (I've got some STM MCU's for other projects I've been involved with and happen to have a selection of programmer/debuggers on hand). Has anyone tried this? I'm suspecting that an updated bootloader might be enough for it, but I might be barking up the wrong tree.

The kit came with a 128MB flash card that I was able to eventually apply a manual update with, and I've tried some good 32GB cards (worked on my BTT SKR Turbo 1.3) and lots of things to try and trick it into working. I've got an 8GB SD card (no, not Micro-SD, good old chunky SD) and I can't find anything in my collection less than 32GB aside from this oddball 128MB one it came with. I've used both windows and linux formatters and the recommended sdformatter app, and I've tried fat 16 as well as 32 on the small card, and removing the 32GB partition and loading a much smaller one (4 and 8GB) and forced 4096 cluster sizes.

My thinking is to get the STMCube bootloader extracted and push that on via DFU before trying to get it loading. Going to try powering the MCU from the Pi as well (instead of from 24V - they're on seperate supplies, so it ought to function this way)

Going DFU feels a bit like a last resort and I want to know if anyone has any other ideas before I do something stupid and end up trying to de-brick it.

 

[shiftingtech]

Klipper is more than capable of flashing your octopus via dfu (using dfu-util). There's absolutely no reason to complicated matters with stm32cube or any kind of new bootloader

 

[majic79]

Yeeeees, but that means I have to power down the machine, place a jumper on the pins, power up the machine before I do anything. I can reduce that problem a bit by taking power from USB instead of from mainboard 24v, but I still have to raise the bed, lift the bottom panel and mess with cables/jumpers, when a working sd-card install can be done remotely without having to go up/down stairs into the workshop twice. Sure, I'll get my steps in, but I don't want to spend 20minutes on a 10s job

 

[Sanity Agathion]

Take a look into Katapult (formerly Canboot) Klipper bootloader, this allows you to flash firmware without this. Carefully check inctructions on what you need to compile. There should be guides on the internet, mostly combined with CAN setup guides but you can flash just the MCU. It;'s uiniversal bootloader not paired with CAN.

 

[majic79]

Thanks, I'll take a look at it - anything that lets me update remotely without having to go down to the workshop

 

[shiftingtech]

Nope! Actually it doesn't. (unless you're running in can-bridge mode. Then you want katapult, as Sanity mentioned)

You see, once you get klipper onto the board the first time, klipper can reboot the board into dfu mode whenever needed.

Its all part of the functionality of klipper's make flash command. You use

make flash FLASH_DEVICE=/dev/serial/by-id/whatever-the-id-is

 

[majic79]

That's good to know - I'll give it a try! Thanks, I appreciate the information