I have been looking into the possibilities of stand-alone printing with the SD, and there are a bunch of possibilities out there:

1) The Panelolu - monochromatic LCD screen with a rotary encoder - around 50$

2) The ViKi LCD - a sleekier version of the above - around 75$

3) The touch TFT LCD - a nicer interface, color 3.2" display - around 80$

4) Other variants...

They all require an SD card for printing and need to be physically attached to a pc to load the GCode. The Panelolu also does not allow a GCode-controlled fan to be used in parallel.

All these solutions seemed to offer too little for the considerable expense and installation efforts (soldering, assembly, firmware modding...)

So I recently bought a Pengpod 700, an ARM tablet that runs a full linux distribution (and Android if you want it).

For around 110$, you get a full computer with Linux, a 7" capacitive touchscreen, internal storage, wifi, USB connection etc. So I turned it into a standalone interface for my SD2:

I enabled a shared folder on the tablet where I put the gcode that I slice on another computer, and modified pronterface to run nicely with a 7" LCD touchscreen:

The modified Pronterface can run in fullscreen, has the buttons a bit shuffled around and made bigger in order to be used with a touch, and has a small on-screen keyboard for manual GCode insertion. In principle it could also slice, but I don't do it because it would be slow and inconvenient. This version of Pronterface can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/fsantini/Printrun-pengpod700

To mount the tablet on the printer, I created these holders: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:69593 that have magnets in the back so they can stand on the casing of the SD2 expert model (mounting tape can also be used in place of magnets, for different casings).

So, in summary, I now have a fully-functional touchscreen pronterface installation that can drive the Solidoodle, for a total cost of 110$. No assembly, soldering, firmware modding required. Just a little bit of fiddling with Linux (if required, I can post a step-by-step guide, or prepare an ad-hoc linux image).

If you would like more in-depth information, feel free to ask.

Notes:

- I had some problems with motors skipping steps in the beginning, and as mentioned in another thread, this was due to USB voltages. Cut the 5V line from USB on the sanguinololu board or just regulate the trimpots with the tablet attached to

solve the problem.

- Update: I added pause support like in RepetierHost! It is important that the build dimensions are set to 159x150x150+0+0+0+159+150+0 (for the SD2). Anywhere in the gcode you can use



;@pause

to insert a pause (notice the semi-colon before the @!)

Future developments:

- I am constantly refining the pronterface GUI to make it more usable and in general improve the experience. Suggestions are welcome!

Update: An SD card image for the PengPod700 is directly downloadable from my website: http://www.francescosantini.com/index.php?page=threed The provider does not give me much bandwidth, so please be patient. I will also look for a faster mirror.