Anet A8 Upgrade: Why & How You Should Update Your Firmware - Marlin Install Tutorial

Upgrade bed leveling and safety for the Anet A8 by installing Marlin Firmware. It really should be the first upgrade you do. In the video I talk about more reasons why and how to do the install.

Download Links:
https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
https://github.com/SkyNet3D/anet-board
http://marlinfw.org/meta/download/

Additional Notes:

• If Anet 1.0 is not showing up in the Arduino Board menu make sure you install the board definitions ! Take a look at 6:47 and 7:18

• Some Anets are coming with a different board version (1.5) that might show an upload error when installing Marlin. If you are getting an error when installing take a look at this page for some ideas on fixing it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anet3DPrinters/comments/7t74x6/marlin_firmware_for_anet_a8_problem_uploading/.
  Also commenter MrLateraliss said to fix his v1.5 board he "had to burn bootloader with a USBasp, as well as a 10 pin to 6 pin adapter, because this method doesn't work with the newer 1.5 board.
  After I did that, then this worked to flash Marlin."

• If you're not seeing your printer apply the bed leveling compensation, do the following:

  • Level the bed through the menu
  • Save the bed leveling through the menu
  • Add "M420 S1" to your start gcode AFTER "G28"
  • More info here: http://marlinfw.org/docs/features/auto_bed_leveling.html

• If Anet 1.0 is not showing up in your Arduino Board menu make sure you install the board definitions ! Take a look at 6:47 and 7:18

• If you're getting an error like: avrdude: ser_open(): can't open device "\.\COM1" when trying to install the firmware, make sure you are not connected to your printer in another way. Like through a slicer, etc. (thanks Joe Robidoux for this tip)

• If you find that the thermal runaway protections are too precautious you can change them with the settings shown here: http://marlinfw.org/docs/configuration/configuration.html#thermal-protection-settings

• A few people in the comments mentioned that you can change the name shown on the printer by changing the "#define CUSTOM_MACHINE_NAME" line. More info here: http://marlinfw.org/docs/configuration/configuration.html#custom-machine-name

• Jeerka mentioned in the comments that you can change the language by finding the "#define LCD_LANGUAGE en" lines and changing "en" to your language. You can find a list of languages here: http://marlinfw.org/docs/development/lcd_language.html

• I do not cover setting up a sensor in this video. But I have been using a BLTouch with Marlin and found most of the info to set it up here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2091529 I also took some notes which you can find here: https://gist.github.com/MatthewRayfield/37dd515aaf712bf93a5052e67f1a4ca2

• If for some reason you need to downgrade to the original firmware you can find it here: https://www.3dprintersbay.com/anet-a8-a6-firmwares-latest

And check out http://matthewrayfield.com