Compilation from Source
Smoothie can be compiled using GCC.
First of all, get Smoothie's source.
You do not need to do any of this if you just want to use your board. This is only needed if you want the absolute latest firmware, or are modifying Smoothie's source.
Getting a toolchain
To compile smoothie, you need a toolchain ( a compiler, a linker, etc … ).
Smoothie provides install scripts to automagically install a great toolchain. Simply go into the Smoothie folder, then run the install script appropriate for your platform:
- Windows: win_install.cmd
- OS X: mac_install
- Linux: linux_install
Windows users
Double click from the Window Explorer screen and the system will install the tools for you.
Trying to execute "win_install.cmd" from a windows command window will not work at all.
I know I tried about 10 different methods and only the windows explorer screen method worked.
This will download and install a working toolchain.
In Ubuntu Linux 64bit, you will also need to install "libc6-dev-i386"
You can then run the BuildShell script which will be created during the install to properly configure the PATH environment variable
In Linux or OSX :
./BuildShell
or you can take the appropriate directories and add them to your PATH through your existing environment configuration options/scripts.
Windows users
Double click from the Window Explorer screen "BuildShell" and this will generate a windows command screen that when you type in "make clean all" will build the complete system and leave the binary for download to the board in the "LPC1768" directory.
There are no further steps to be done to build the software.
Space, the final frontier
On some operating systems ( this has been reported with Windows and MacOS ), having a "space" character in the path to your Smoothie installation, can cause the installation of the toolchain to fail.
Please make sure you don't have any space characters in your path ( this is often caused by usernames having spaces in them ). This could also be caused by special characters.
Compiling
Once BuildShell is created, you want to launch it, and compile all of the code that Smoothie consists of:
make clean all
Ref: "make clean all" will compile|recompile everything needed for Smoothie. The end result will be the file main.bin in the subfolder LPC1768.
Mbed online compiler
It is possible to compile Smoothie without having to install a compiler using the mBed online compiler, but please note that this only supports a very old version of Smoothie : Smoothie on Mbed
This is not at all a recommended method
Windows error
On Windows, if you get an error like process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, echo Building src, …) failed., this means that there is a sh.exe somewhere on your path (such as the one installed by the Windows GitHub client) - this confuses GNU Make 3.81 into thinking you're on a Unix-like system.
One solution is to replace build\win32\make.exe with a copy of version 3.82 - downloaded from here, perhaps.
More information on the process of getting mBed code to compile with GCC can be found here ( recommended read ).
Flashing to the board
If you are using a mBed please see here.
If you are using a smoothieboard, the SD bootloader is already present.
If you are using a LPCXpresso1769 then you must first install the SD bootloader.
Once it is compiled, then simply copy the generated .bin file to the SD card with the name firmware.bin, then reset and it will be flashed to the board automatically.
Example :
make
cp LPC1768/main.bin /media/smoothieboard-or-mbed/firmware.bin
Detailled instructions can be found on the Flashing Smoothie page.
Linux and OS/X users
An alternative way to flash main.bin is to use a utility called dfu-util
make upload will use this to flash the new firmware, so long as smoothie is currently running.
If smoothie has crashed, then you can still use make upload by:-
- holding the play/pause button
- click the reset button
- wait one second and release the play/pause button
This puts the boot loader into dfu mode and make upload will now work.
NOTE dfu is not enabled by default, you must add the following to your config file…
dfu_enable true # enable dfu
