Update on Testing
We’ve been working hard on getting our new EZBoard V2.0 finished and ready to sell. Our prototypes have been running well for many months now with no issues. There were a few minor revisions from the prototype boards that were made (adding more status LEDs and some routing changes) so we want to test the new revision before doing a full run of boards.
Currently, we are waiting on the 1st small batch of the retail boards to get to us and we should have them this week. These boards will be tested for a few more weeks to make sure no further revisions are needed before we move ahead with the main production run. We will be testing the boards internally here to qualify that they work. Thermal load testing and destructive testing will be performed as well.
Timeline
We originally were targeting a release for this month but due to delays on the PCB assembler end, that target date will not be met. We want to make sure we release a fully working product and not rush anything out the door. Some companies in this space are OK with rushing out products without thorough testing, we do not do that here.
If all goes to plan, the EZBoard V2 should be available for purchase no later than the end of September 2021.
Pricing
The price will be $129.99 at release and this price will fluctuate depending on the costs of CPUs when we do production runs. Due to the silicon shortage, pricing on STM processors varies widely based on availability and demand. We will only be using Genuine STM CPUs on our boards, which will bring costs up. When we originally designed the V2 board the cost was lower than our V1 but due to the silicon shortage, it is now more expensive to produce than the V1. The EZBoard V2 will also include a 6-month warranty and technical support as well in the purchase price.
Board Versions
Naming Change – The V1 was called the EZBoard Lite. Since this board is more feature-packed we are dropping the “Lite” naming and it will simply be called the EZBoard V2.
Pro Version – We do have plans for a 5-driver dual extruder “Pro” version but due to the silicon shortage we are not able to make those happen for the foreseeable future as the CPUs we would need are not available. Please do not send messages asking when the “Pro” will be out because even we do not know.
New Features
While we will not divulge ALL the new features of the board until they are ready for sale (this is due to other companies copying our products in the past before release), here are some new features that are added compared to the V1 series EZBoards.
TMC2209 – We will be shipping these with TMC2209 drivers in UART mode along with sensorless homing connected should people want to use that feature. We do still recommend using endstops as sensorless homing requires calibration for your printer to use.
Additional Protections against User Error – We’ve added some extra layers of protection to try and prevent users from accidentally shorting out the boards via their hotend and bed thermistor ports. This will not prevent “all” situations from damaging the CPU but it should let the board be more resilient against hotend and/or bed thermistor shorts to VIN.
Beefier CPU – Since the NXP CPUs are nowhere to be found, we have switched over to a higher-end STM32 CPU that is not only faster than the previous LPC but also has an FPU built in for quicker math processing. This CPU also has more memory than the EZBoard V1 to better future-proof it as new firmware updates come out that need more memory.
There are many other new features and they will be announced once the boards are in hand and ready to sell.
EZFirmware Support
The EZBoard V2 will be supported in our EZFirmware site to make compiling firmware easier for our customers, just like on the V1 boards.
Will this support a touchscreen upgrade as well?
Since we do not sell any touchscreens they will not be officially supported. There will be TX and RX pins to connect those types of screens (like on our V1) but our technical support will not extend to touch LCDs.