Build Doodle3D Into Your Ultimaker +

Doodle3D is a little box you connect to your Ultimaker (or other 3Dprinter) that you can use to instantly print 'doodles' drawn on your tablet, laptop or phone.

It is a bit cumbersome to connect: you need the doodle3D wifi box, a 5V poweradapter, a USB A to mini-B cable to power the box and a USB AB (fullsize) to connect your Ultimaker. Add a cat5 networking cable if for some reason your home network is wired-only.

Fortunately if you own a recent Ultimaker, there is plenty of room in the electronics compartment to add a doodle3D box. This instructable will show you how to mount it and how to make the cable to hook it up electrically.

First if you haven't done so already: get yourself a doodle3D wifi box. You can buy them at doodle3D.com or build it from a common mr3020 'mobile router' and some software steps ('ible to follow).

This is an 'ible to upgrade your 3Dprinter, what would it be witout something to print out? Print out the bracket that fits your router thingy, the mr3020 is perfect if you have an original doodle3D box. There is no beauty in this print, it is just a simple bracket.

you can find the files for the bracket here on thingiverse

Put a screw in the bracket and locate it in the existing hole. mark the location of the second hole, remove bracket and drill the hole with a 3mm drill. Then put two m3 bolts trough the holes and screw down your wifi box with the doodle3D label pointing down. Make sure that both USB connections remain accessible and the lights on top stay visible.

Take the USB cable that came with your wifi box and cut it 10-15cm from the B-mini connector. Strip back the outer isolation and locate the red and black (5V and Ground) wires. Free these at least 3cm from the outer isolation and strip the last 5mm to the bare copper. Put 10-15mm long pieces of heat shrink tubing over the individual wires.

Cut a strip of female headers (0.1") to a width of 3 pins (cut a 4th pin and trim with a knife). you only need 2 working pins, the third one makes it a little easier to mount the connector the right way.

Solder the red wire (5V) to the middle pin and solder the black wire to the pin to the right of it (yup, left is also OK as long as you mount the connector correctly, smartass). When you are done slide the heatshrink over the soldered ends and shrink. If you don't have any heatshrink ready, a dollop op hotglue will isolate too and look ueber-ghetto.

Lay the printer on its left side, switch up, remove the electronics coverplate and turn the machine on (ignore the warnings, living on the edge baby!). Locate the ext-io connector, it sits between connector j28 and fan at the bottom side of the board. With your voltmeter, verify the pinout of ext-io is as you expect it to be (fist row signal, 5V, ground, second row: signal, 5V, ground), does this coincide with the pinout of the connector you just made? (nc, 5V, ground). When all is OK, plug in the power to the doodle box, its light should come on to indicate it has power. You did mount it with the lights visible, did you?

Put back the cover plate and plug the usb AB cable in the doodle3D box and the ultimaker. Set the machine back on its feet, now the only extra wire is the usb cable peeping out from under the machine: much neater!

A downside of this setup is that your doodle3D box is always on when your printer is on. That makes it slightly harder to use like you were used to. The printing interface that Cura offers to print directly through the doodle3D box is less refined than the workflow using an SD-card and the UM controller. The USB cable that sneaks out from under the machine is still a little clutter.

You can solve this by adding a switch in the power cable to the doodle3D and optionally soldering the USB cable to the USB testpoints on the ultiboard.

Just let me know in the comments what you would like me to expand, or maybe I'll work it into a next 'ible.