ADVi3++ 4

I had a bit of downtime with my Monoprice Maker Select Plus 3D printer, so I decided it was time to upgrade the custom firmware, ADVi3++ 3.0.x, to the newer 4.0.6.

I’ve done the upgrade previously to get the 3.x firmware in the first place, so I knew I needed to upgrade in 2 steps: the LCD via a microSD card and the main board via Cura over USB.

I dug through the manuals and directions a bit, and decided I could copy the contents of the raw zip onto a formatted SD card instead of writing the img file to the raw SD device with dd. That fit on a handy 2GiB card. I took the couple screws out of the front panel, inserted the micro SD card, powered it up, and watched the LCD display all the new images it was loading. When it’s done, I turned it off, and replaced the screws.

Then I could easily connect the printer to the Linux laptop via USB, and upload the custom firmware hex file from Cura’s Manage Printers screen. I did need to take a moment to add my user to the dialout group to get access to the USB ports for serial communication to the printer.

Upon reboot, the printer wiped out the old incompatible settings, and I rebooted it again to see the new startup screen and version numbers. I ran through some tunings: PID and extruder, and kicked off a test print that went fine.

I currently have the thermal protection enabled, and I’m hoping it’s not too sensitive, and I can keep it turned on. I expect this upgrade will hold for a long time until I see 5.0 available, and it’s had some time to settle.