Improve encoder precision and reduce accidental clicks and scrolls.

[dbuezas]

I recently got an UM2 as a gift and realised that the rotary encoder feels irresponsive and I often end up clicking the wrong thing.

This MR improves control by

• Adding hysteresis. Each menu item is always a full "tic" away. Before, right after one scroll, you were half a tic away from the previous one, and 8 half tics from the next one. Each physical "tic" of the encoder now perfectly corresponds to a scroll.
• Adding a subtle sound feedback each time any menu is scrolled.
• Ignoring button presses that happen too close to a scroll. So no more accidentally selecting the wrong menu item.
• Ignoring scrolls to close to the last button press.
• With all of this making the encoder so precise, the the amount of encoder tics per menu action can be reduced from 8 half ticks to 1 full tic in the main menu, and from 4 halfs to 1 full in submenues. So I changed that too.

Given how low the activity in this repo has been lately, I don't expect this MR to be merged. Instead, I hope other late comers (like myself) may enjoy these modifications.

And I must say: thanks for making this firmware, it is so much better than stock!

[gr5]

Given how low the activity in this repo has been lately, I don't expect this MR to be merged

You'd be surprised!

[dbuezas]

You'd be surprised!

Indeed, I would be surprised

[TinkerGnome]

I am surprised that my GitHub account still works... :smile:

low activity == low chance of conflicts, so.... that worked out well!

My UM2 is retired, that means i can't test it myself anymore. It sounds like a very useful change and gr5 likes it - so that worked out well too! Thank you!

[dbuezas]

Alright, I AM surprised :) Now I wonder if marlin 2 is worth a try in the ultimaker 2

[TinkerGnome]

Now I wonder if marlin 2 is worth a try in the ultimaker 2

Personally i would rather ditch the old electronics and replace it with a Duet3D (or whatever counts as "state of the art" nowadays). Quiet stepper drivers are a huge QOL improvement. I think there are successful examples documented in the UM community forum. I don't see any ground breaking features in Marlin2 an UM2 could really benefit from. As always: IMHO and YMMV :smiley:

[dbuezas]

Thank you for your advice! Much appreciated.

For now I added the dreaded stepper dampers and replaced all fans with magnetic levitation motors (and made myself a small circuit to drive them via pwm which they don't tolerate). I'll convert it to 1.75mm filament next, get a better extruder, and all the other tweaks us newbies seem to want to do 😅, and then maybe replace the board with a modern one with better stepper drivers. Tbh, I enjoy the simplicity and compilation speed of 8bit micros, so I may stay 2010s for a while

[dbuezas]

I did end up replacing the board as you suggested. Thanks for the recommendation. I picked a latest generation one, ans SKR 3 which is a powerhouse. Was welcomed with screen and thermistor incompatibilities, but luckily solved with some soldering and a PR. Marlin 2 also does something similar like this PR, but an encoder count threshold is used instead of a secondary substep counter as I did. Anyway, thanks for the recommendation, the machine is definitely better now