Thanks nstiesi.
Dan - yes - the board has G marked clearly for the ground pin and the other one for signal.
The second point however was a concern raised on the discord for the board (regarding 5V input violating the input voltage limit of the ESP32 GPIOs . but if it has worked for Nstesi and Ryan… is it safe to assume all will be well ?
As per Ryan’s post up there, should be fine.
@Rocketman question made me wonder: what else do I need to complete this project? Like I said I am 100% a newb. I don’t have an extensive electronics hobby to draw experience from. And besides an “as-seen-on-TV” wire stripper that my dad gave me I don’t have a set of tools dedicated to electronics.
From my research I will need a soldering iron, a Dupont crimping tool and connectors, strippers, pliers, and maybe insulated screwdrivers. Am I missing anything? Which of these do I need to “invest” into quality and which can I just get by with the cheapo amazon version?
Wait, you should not need any of those things. For the most part you just plug everything in, unless you are messing with Individually addressable LED’s and even then you might not need anything special depending on what you buy.
Oh thank god! I don’t mind picking up new tools but it was stressing me out more than a little. And thank you Ryan for quick shipment. I have all my printed parts done and am now just waiting on the control board. Looking forward to getting this thing up and running!
Just had to mention this here… a few days ago I get home from work and my wife pulls out a new skr e3 v2 w/ tft35 e3 v3, which she found at a local discount store called Falling Prices for $0.25… yes not a typo. She has come home with a ton of awesomely affordable stuff from that place recently ($0.50 for 25’ of silver tinned marine grade 4awg, a 10" drywall finishing box for $2, a genuine bltouch for $0.25), but the timing of the skr board had to involve some extra luck.
This luck changed the path of my zenxy build, which originally had a 2560/ramps 1.4. I had to sort out a bunch of things in marlin, esp3d, and the tft firmware, but I finally have a working setup for the zenxy. I found the skr e3 is a nice fit, with built in 2209’s, and somewhat simpler firmware configs (also one less ribbon for the tft too). It works well with esp3d using an esp01 on the tft. It prints using the tftsd, onboard sd, or tft usb stick, which is a step up from my gtr v1.0 powered printer (which does not work with usb yet).
The only issue I have with it all is I think unrelated to the hardware… pausing using the tft screen moves the ball across the sand creating an unwanted line. You can disable moving on pause within marlin, but when printing from the tft, it appears there is currently no way to configure the pause to stay put (a pause xy position is required to compile the tft fw… and I haven’t found how to otherwise disable or bypass this motion). Pausing from esp3d or the tft (touch or marlin mode) works as expected when printing from the onboard sd (marlin stays put and resumes from the same spot). So sticking to the marlin defined sdcard for gcode files would be a valid workaround I guess, if pausing a zenxy is even a feature worth worrying about (I imagined some scenarios where pausing may be nice to have, but maybe I’m overthinking it).
Think I may have mentioned that on the discord after I saw the problem with the 5V input module schematic. It’s an easy problem to fix, but does require a custom input board (or you can use the opto isolated input which is safe, but spendy). I made some custom input PCB’s for it using my MPCNC. They have the same noise reducing features as the original (same schmitt trigger ic w/ rc filters), but they actually output 0-3.3V to the esp32 pins. I took liberty to add some leds to the boards for visual feedback. Note the ULN2803 board is another nod to the frugal maker (cheaper and more reliable than relays for driving 12V devices like mist, flood, etc). 
Ordered hardware for a v2 ZenXY. The Bart Dring board looks great but out of stock for a long time. Most recently - what are people using on there Zen? I’m pretty savvy but haven’t setup a SKD or Ramps board yet. Curious about any other simple 2 axis controls out there. If it’s easier to get Ryan’s configured board I may, but seems like a lot of overkill. Any input is appreciated!
Jared
I have one that is operating on a cheap RAMPS stack with a pair of DRV8825 drivers on it. It works fine on the RAMPS firmware. I have a MKS Gen L v1.0 operating on the same firmware in reserve. The downside is that there is no network interface so it needs something else. I have a v1pi on the RAMPS stack to add octoprint.
Of course I have one of the Bart Dring boards as well, and I like it a lot. I would consider a board based on the ESP32 with more channels that aren’t needed, so lomg as it can manage coreXY kinematics.
Anyone running the TMC2209 Silent drives with a RAMPS stack? I’m looking at them and trying to understand is they are compatible.
I think many of the “laser” 2 stepper controllers would work. I remember seeing a bunch that used drv8825s and an Arduino nano running grbl.
There are a few other boards supported by fluidNC now. Some pandas and mks ones, IIRC.
TMC is really nice to have. The drivers work in two different modes though. The most popular is to actually set things like the current over uart (for the 2208/9) or spi (2130/5160). But you can also find some in standalone mode, where you use the little trim pot to adjust the current and they can have the silent mode enabled. If you can figure that out, then you could get a silent TMC drivers working on a very cheap and available grbl board.
