Buddy

This repository includes source code and firmware releases for the Original Prusa 3D printers based on the 32-bit ARM microcontrollers.

The currently supported models are:

• Original Prusa MINI
• Original Prusa MK4
• Original Prusa XL

Getting Started

Requirements

• Python 3.6 or newer (with pip)

Cloning this repository

Run git clone https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy.git.

Building (on all platforms, without an IDE)

Run python utils/build.py. The binaries are then going to be stored under ./build/products.

• Without any arguments, it will build a release version of the firmware for all supported printers and bootloader settings.
• To generate .bbf versions of the firmware, use: ./utils/build.py --generate-bbf.
• Use --build-type to select build configurations to be built (debug, release).
• Use --preset to select for which printers the firmware should be built.
• By default, it will build the firmware in "prerelease mode" set to beta. You can change the prerelease using --prerelease alpha, or use --final to build a final version of the firmware.
• Use --host-tools to include host tools in the build (bin2cc, png2font, ...)
• Find more options using the --help flag!

Examples:

Build the firmware for MINI and XL in debug mode:

python utils/build.py --preset mini,xl --build-type debug

Build the firmware for MINI using a custom version of gcc-arm-none-eabi (available in $PATH) and use Make instead of Ninja (not recommended):

python utils/build.py --preset mini --toolchain cmake/AnyGccArmNoneEabi.cmake --generator 'Unix Makefiles'

Windows 10 troubleshooting

If you have python installed and in your PATH but still getting cmake error Python3 not found. Try running python and python3 from cmd. If one of it opens Microsoft Store instead of either opening python interpreter or complaining 'python3' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. Open manage app execution aliases and disable App Installer association with python.exe and python3.exe.

Python environment

The build.py script will install some Python packages. If you prefer not to have your system modified, we recommend to use virtualenv or a similar tool.

virtualenv venv
. venv/bin/activate

Development

The build process of this project is driven by CMake and build.py is just a high-level wrapper around it. As most modern IDEs support some kind of CMake integration, it should be possible to use almost any editor for development. Below are some documents describing how to setup some popular text editors.

• Visual Studio Code
• Vim
• Eclipse, STM32CubeIDE
• Other LSP-based IDEs (Atom, Sublime Text, ...)

Formatting

All the source code in this repository is automatically formatted:

• C/C++ files using clang-format,
• Python files using yapf,
• and CMake files using cmake-format.

If you want to contribute, make sure to install pre-commit and then run pre-commit install within the repository. This makes sure that all your future commits will be formatted appropriately. Our build server automatically rejects improperly formatted pull requests.

XL and Puppies

With the XL, the situation gets a bit more complex. The firmware of XLBuddy contains firmwares for the puppies (Dwarf and Modularbed) to flash them when necessary. We support several ways of dealing with those firmwares when developing:

1. Build Dwarf/Modularbed firmware automatically and flash it on startup by XLBuddy (the default)

   • The Dwarf & ModularBed firmware will be built from this repo.
   • The puppies are going to be flashed on startup by the XLBuddy. The puppies have to be running the Puppy Bootloader.

2. Build Dwarf/Modularbed from a given source directory and flash it on startup by XLBuddy.

   • Specify DWARF_SOURCE_DIR/MODULARBED_SOURCE_DIR CMake cache variable with the local repo you want to use.
   • Example below would build modularbed's firmware from /Projects/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy-ModularBed and include it in the xlBuddy firmware.

   cmake .. --preset xl_release_boot -DMODULARBED_SOURCE_DIR=/Projects/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy-ModularBed
   

   • You can also specify the build directory you want to use:

   cmake .. --preset xl_release_boot \
       -DMODULARBED_SOURCE_DIR=/Projects/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy-ModularBed  \
       -DMODULARBED_BINARY_DIR=/Projects/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy-ModularBed/build
   

3. Use pre-built Dwarf/Modularbed firmware and flash it on startup by xlBuddy

   • Specify the location of the .bin file with DWARF_BINARY_PATH/MODULARBED_BINARY_PATH.
   • For example

   cmake .. --preset xl_release_boot -DDWARF_BINARY_PATH=/Downloads/dwarf-4.4.0-boot.bin
   

4. Do not include any puppy firmware, and do not flash the puppies by XLBuddy.

   -DENABLE_PUPPY_BOOTLOAD=NO
   

   • With the ENABLE_PUPPY_BOOTLOAD set to false, the project will disable Puppy flashing & interaction with Puppy bootloaders.
   • It is up to you to flash the correct firmware to the puppies (noboot variant).

See /ProjectOptions.cmake for more information about those cache variables.

Running tests

mkdir build-tests
cd build-tests
cmake ..
make tests
ctest .

Flashing Custom Firmware

To install custom firmware, you have to break the appendix on the board. Learn how to in the following article https://help.prusa3d.com/article/zoiw36imrs-flashing-custom-firmware.

Feedback

• Feature Requests from Community

License

The firmware source code is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and the graphics and design are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Fonts are licensed under different license (see LICENSE).