MatterControl requiring reconnection

[JohnnyDude]

I've got a Rostock MAX v2, working great so far. MatterControl's been working fine for the most part too.

Within MatterControl, at various times, I am required to disconnect and reconnect to my printer. To clarify, I have to click the "Disconnect" and "Connect" button at the upper left of the screen. I don't have a firm understanding or when or why it occurs. Some clues are:

• I see this issue most often during my preparation towards starting a print. Specifically, I manually preheat my printer (nozzle and bed), wait a while for the hot end to heat up, and then I intend to extrude about 30mm of filament manually. However, when I click the E+ or E- buttons for manual extrusion, nothing happens. After this, I disconnect and reconnect, and then I'm mysteriously able to extrude.
• I definitely remember a case in which I set the nozzle and heatbed temperatures, and MatterControl claimed to have the target set appropriately. However, the LCD on the printer told me otherwise (target temperatures were both at 0). I tried other temperatures from MatterControl, but no changes occurred on the printer. After disconnecting and reconnecting, the problem went away.
• I do not have any disconnection problems during prints (and I'm not touching any controls at this point either).
• I vaguely remember having similar troubles with manual movement operations too. I could not move the print head unless I disconnected and reconnected.

Has anyone else seen problems like these?

[BenTheRighteous]

That usually happens when I either:

• Power cycle the printer using the power switch
• Click the manual control buttons too fast (for example, clicking the extrude button twice in a row, so it tries to start a second extrude before the first one has finished)

I definitely get the feeling that this is all built on a house of cards - unless you touch things exactly the right way, it will all fall apart. I don't mind; considering that this is all open-source stuff and most of this is people working on it in their spare time, I'm quite happy that it works this well to begin with!

[Captain Starfish]

I get the same. For me the easiest way to reproduce it is to hit the extrude button (10mm) a few times - and then she just locks up. Rebooting the printer when connected often leaves the temperature control in some limbo, usually cleaned up by rebooting the printer again but sometimes a disconnect/reconnect works.

Hint: it happens with Repetier Host and Cura, too.

I suspect the Repetier firmware is getting its knickers in a twist in some circumstances and ignoring input on the USB connection.

[jdurand]

I've had temperature control issues with my Afinia when using the PRINT AGAIN function. Occasionally the reported nozzle temperature just goes crazy (I do not believe 380C a minute or so after reporting 200C). I found using the INITIALIZE function before starting every print seems to prevent the crazy temperatures. So...are all these guys using the same PID code which obviously has a bug in it?

[JohnnyDude]

Okay, sounds like the oddities are normal. This gives me peace of mind! Overall I really like MatterControl. I'm going to be sad to lose some of the features when I start relying on OctoPi again.

Thanks for the help!