Silent 1.1.5 board does have an inbuilt bootloader

[Ender5r]

Today, I successfully updated my Ender 5 Pro's firmware to TH3D Unified Firmware UFW_U1.R2.B3. So, at least as far as my Silent 1.1.5 board is concerned, it definitely has a bootloader built in. Very nice to know.

[StumblingBumblingIdiot]

YES! I was so thrilled at that also when I upgrade my regular 5 to the silent board. Makes it so much easier and less expensive as you don't have to buy an arduino or anything! I also used the TH3D firmware and miss the scrolling filename on the lcd. Seems the th3d has a static one that just shows whatever characters fit. I will have to search and see if that can be changed in the firmware.

[Ender5r]

I never even noticed that. Good luck with resolving it. I bet though, if you contact TH3D, they likely will look into incorporating that feature. OR........ we could ask the great & powerful DrVAX to contact them on our behalf. I'm betting he has had contact with them before and may even be 'friends' with some of them. C'mon Doc, come out from behind that curtain 😁

[StumblingBumblingIdiot]

LOL Once i get some time I will have to look into it. Been so busy here of late, ugh.

[Ender5r]

I now suspect I know what TH3D will say. I found some notes on their site to the effect that they had to leave out a number of things due to memory constraints on the 1.1.5 board. Seems like another good reason to upgrade to a 32 bit board (like the TH3D EZ Board Lite).

[StumblingBumblingIdiot]

I now suspect I know what TH3D will say. I found some notes on their site to the effect that they had to leave out a number of things due to memory constraints on the 1.1.5 board. Seems like another good reason to upgrade to a 32 bit board (like the TH3D EZ Board Lite).

Yea the memory restraints are crazy on these boards. I may go 32-bit one day but hate to rip it all apart while it is working pretty good lol

[Ender5r]

Yea the memory restraints are crazy on these boards. I may go 32-bit one day but hate to rip it all apart while it is working pretty good lol

I presume much of the issue with memory is that the chips are likely 8-bit, so their memory addressing capability is pretty limited. 32-bit certainly changes that limit a whole lot! 😉

[3dVit]

My Ender 5 Pro arrived back early June, and it actually did not ship with a bootloader installed. This was accomplished easily enough though with my Arduino and the free Anduino IDE. An alternative option would be to use a usb programmer like the one that ships with the BLTouch, and use the Arduino IDE in tangent. I’ve been able to successfully get my firmware updated to the latest Marlin 2.0.x since then with BLTouch as well. That little 8bit chipped is now at max capacity though. 32bit upgrade is in my near future I think.

[Ender5r]

Ender 5 Pro arrived back early June, and it actually did not ship with a bootloader installed.

Can I ask which board your Ender 5 came with? I ask because my understanding is that 1 of the major selling points of the Pro version is that it came with the 1.1.5 board, and all 1.1.5's are supposed to have an onboard bootloader. It would be interesting if that's not the case.

[3dVit]

Can I ask which board your Ender 5 came with? I ask because my understanding is that 1 of the major selling points of the Pro version is that it came with the 1.1.5 board, and all 1.1.5's are supposed to have an onboard bootloader. It would be interesting if that's not the case.

Absolutely... my board is in fact the v1.1.5. I’ve read in some other posts on the web where others have had the same experience. It seems to be sporadic though. I can’t really narrow it down to a timeframe. I’ve read them as far back as 8months ago and then obviously mine is only a month old. So, very random.

[Ender5r]

OK. that's pretty odd all right. I remember, when I was having issues when my printer was brand new (end of May 2020), I fixed an issue with the Creality v1.1.8 firmware by flashing my printer with TH3D Unified. This is how I discovered my 1.1.5 board did, in fact, have a bootloader. I searched the Internet to get a definitive answer to whether 1.1.5s did or did not have one. I could not find a definitive answer. Perhaps your experience is 1 reason why. In the end, I simply tried it, and it worked

Are there any particular advantages to the 2.x version?

[3dVit]

OK. that's pretty odd all right. I remember, when I was having issues when my printer was brand new (end of May 2020), I fixed an issue with the Creality v1.1.8 firmware by flashing my printer with TH3D Unified. This is how I discovered my 1.1.5 board did, in fact, have a bootloader. I searched the Internet to get a definitive answer to whether 1.1.5s did or did not have one. I could not find a definitive answer. Perhaps your experience is 1 reason why. In the end, I simply tried it, and it worked

Are there any particular advantages to the 2.x version?

When I initially added the BLTouch I had some issues getting a couple firmware “upgrades” to work. I prefer the DIY route though and did not try TH3D. That being said it was a nice learning experience. Trying to find a good Pro out of box firmware version with BLTouch enabled was pretty tough so I tried using some non pro version. Turned out they all did not have the lead screw update in the code. I had to switch that from 400 to 500. From there I could get it to print well at least, but the auto bed level grid still did not work. Not a big deal but I decided to dive in to 2.0. A cross between Dr Vax, Teaching, & Crosslink I was able to make this super simple. This big things are that you enable the BLtouch in the code and you’re done, minus the pin 27 bit you have to add. The next big win in that when auto homing my carriage no longer smashes into the frame. It lightly touches and trips the switches and that’s it. There are probably others. Biggest fault is that the out of box 2.0 firmware is large. You’ll have to disable a few things. I’ll create a separate post and add my initial changes I did to get it to upload. I’m also having some trouble with this Spidermaker PLA I just bought. I’ll add that separately as well.

[Ender5r]

I look forward to reading about the firmware update & the filament. BTW, I presume you meant to type "400 to 800" for the leadscrew. That's the change I had to make. That's 1 of the issues I had with my printer right out of the box. Let me tell you, 3D Benchy looks really odd at only half height

[3dVit]

Yeah good catch... 400 to 800. Took me a bit to figure that out. I wasn’t sure what was going on there. The calibration cube looked like a square hamburger. And the benchy, yeah.... more like a sunken squashed benchy recovered from the bottom of the ocean. 😂

[Ender5r]

I figured Benchy had been sat on by the Stay Puft Marshmellow man from Ghostbusters