cannot write firmware ender 5 pro

[bacon]

Hey,

New to 3d printing and have enjoyed your videos!!

i had added a bltouch to my ender 5 pro, i have the firmware from the creality site but cannot get it to write when putting it onto the sd card, i have tried both the with board and without board bin files, i have also renamed them to firmware.bin but when i turn on the printer it just goes straight to the normal panel.

any advice would be great

cheers

[Ender5r]

If your Ender 5 Pro has the 1.1.5 Silent control board, you cannot update the firmware by loading it from a bin file on the SD card. That control board can't do that. Instead, the firmware has to be sent from a computer to the control board's USB port. And, it can't be the bin file then either.

There are a couple of choices:

1. use Arduino IDE or VS Code to configure & compile firmware, then send it to the printer. It can be a little bit daunting the 1st time, but it's not horribly difficult. If you have programming experience it should be less daunting. I would recommend you look into firmware from TH3D Studios: https://support.th3dstudio.com/hc/en...rmware-Package
2. the easier choice overall would be to buy & install the Creality 4.2.7 control board. This board is actually quite inexpensive, and it does support firmware upgrades from the SD card. I would caution to be very careful with the BL Touch wiring. I almost burned out my control board because 2 of the BL Touch wires had to be swapped. When powering on the 1st time after making a change (even a firmware upgrade), I keep my finger on the power switch, so I can quickly power off if I notice anything going wrong.

[bacon]

thanks for the reply, would be nice if creality docs were updated to include this :-) when i bought this one of the specs was to be able to update via sd card guess that was wrong on the site.

I will look at pushing a FW via usb as you describe.

thanks again!

[Ender5r]

That's why I asked "If you Ender 5 Pro has the 1.1.5 Silent board". It's possible Creality has decided to start shipping this printer with either the 4.2.2 or 4.2.7 board. You would have to open the power cabinet and look at the board to verify.

[road66warrior]

It sounds like your 5 Pro doesn't have a bootloader installed or it's not reading the bin file on your microSD card. Make sure the microSD card only has the bin file on it and no other files, otherwise it will not work. Some users were also having read/write issues with the microSD card that comes with the 5 Pro, so you may want to try a different card formatted as FAT32, if you're using the one that came with your printer.

Without a bootloader preinstalled, you'll have to take @Ender5r's advice on how to install firmware via your PC using the USB port. Also, be sure to open the bottom panel on your printer to verify which mainboard is on your 5 Pro. They've been shipping with the 32 bit v4.2.2 mainboards with the silent drivers, unless Creality decided to switch over to the v4.2.7

I also have a fairly new 5 Pro (bought it 2 months ago) and it has the v4.2.2 mainboard that I mentioned earlier and it has a bootloader installed, so I've been able to update Marlin via the microSD card without any problem.

[Gramps]

I believe the SD card also needs to be 8 GB or less too.

[Ender5r]

Actually road66warrior, even the 1.1.5 Silent board has a bootloader. However, having a bootloader doesn't mean the printer can update from a .BIN file on an SD card.

Without a bootloader it's not possible to even update over USB. In such situations the firmware can only be updated by connecting a USB ISP type programmer between a header on the control board & a USB port on a computer. Then, a specialized program is run to load a .HEX file and send it over to the printer. The USB ISP can also be used to flash a bootloader to the printer. After that, the firmware can be updated over USB.

It's good to see Creality has been shipping Ender 5 Pro's with 32-bit boards. I received mine 28may2020. It came with the 1.1.5 board. Recently, I upgraded it to a 4.2.7 board, along with a BL Touch.

Gramps, interesting. I guess the easiest way to check would be to try updating the firmware by using a larger SD card.

[roon4660]

Ender5r What do you think about having a 32 bit board instead of 8? Have you noticed many improvements?

[Ender5r]

Ender5r What do you think about having a 32 bit board instead of 8? Have you noticed many improvements?

It just makes it easier to have the full features of Marlin installed. There's no need to pick & choose features to find a combination that will fit into the available memory. It's 1 less thing to worry about.

[roon4660]

I'm still waiting to see what happens to the double extruder. I've spent more on odds and ends for my Ender 3 pro than I paid to buy it without thinking of consumables.
I still haven't attacked my printer. I guess I'll wait till my brain settles down. When I don't have an audience for my plastic creations I lose interest. I'm getting very tired of this lock down.