Marlin Releases Version 2.0.0 Firmware with 32-Bit Support
Marlin’s 2.0 firmware offers support for Adafruit’s Grand Central, Arduino’s Due, and ESP32 boards, among a host of other new features.
Marlin first dropped their open source firmware targeted at the Arduino-based RepRap 3D printer back in 2011 to great fanfare, and have since gone on to provide support to many different printers throughout the following years. Marlin’s 2.0 firmware version has been around in beta form for several years, and has now officially been released for download on GitHub.
The latest firmware brings 32-bit support for several boards, including the Arduino Due (SAM3X8E), Adafruit Grand Central (SAM D51), NXP LPC176x-based Smoothie/SBASE/EZBoard, SKR Mini (STM32), and the ESP32 MCU. Improvements have also been made to several AVR boards as well, including Melzi (ATmega1280), RAMPS (ATmega2560), and RAMBo, miniRambo, and Einsy RAMBo boards.
The feature set for the Marlin 2.0.0 firmware is vast and offers PlatformIO build environments for supported boards, VSCode “Auto Build Marlin" extension for one-click build, power-loss recovery (for SD print jobs), and (magnetic) parking extruder support. It even features (magnetic) switching toolhead and toolchanger support, Prusa MK2 multiplexer support, Prusa Multi-Material Unit v2 (MMU2) support, gradient mixing and gradient virtual tools, Automatic power supply control, and many others.
In addition, Marlin kicked in a myriad of improvements with support for up to six extruders, junction deviation enabled by default, improved linear advance compatibility, and increased support for temperature sensors. Simplified probe boundary configuration, extended M240 photo trigger options, improved Max7219 support, configurable limits for editable planner settings were also added among several others.
Marlin hasn’t forgotten about developers either and has included a hierarchical file layout, standardized HAL interfaces, indexed menu item titles, and automated serial response routing. While the new firmware packs a ton of improvements and features, it does have some issues, including some quirks using G10/G11 mixing extruders, and sensor-less probing, which they state is still in the experimental stage.
A complete overview of Marlin’s new 2.0.0 firmware package can be found here.