Typing Master ((exclusive)) -
When he recommended the program to friends, he did so with simple honesty: "It’s just practice, helpful structure, and the discipline to keep at it." They laughed and asked for shortcuts. He didn’t have any. Mastery, he thought, and now knew, answers to one question: What will you do with the extra minutes you earn?
The software also reflected his attention back at him. When deadlines pressed and he tried to use the program as a cure-all—opening it at midnight with coffee gone cold—his performance sagged. Typing Master didn’t pretend results were inevitable; it demanded the ordinary conditions of learning: rest, repetition, and presence. It taught a humility he had not expected to learn from a machine. A turning point came with a module titled "Variations." It threw unexpected challenges: scrambled sentences that required mental reordering, code snippets that required precise symbols, erasure exercises where typed letters blinked away unless entered in the right sequence. The program adjusted difficulty based on his error patterns, like a patient coach who watched not just outcomes but approach. When Elliot plateaued at a stubborn 60 WPM, the software changed the terrain—speed drills shortened into bursts, accuracy-focused sections lengthened with deliberate slowness, and occasional pressure tests simulated the distracted typing place where his mind tried to outrun his hands. typing master
Typing Master remained on his machine, less an object of daily necessity than a trusted companion. Occasionally he returned to it for a focused week of drills, more as tune-up than remedy. When new habits tempted him to forget practice, the chime of the program was enough to call him back. Typing Master was not a miraculous teacher; it was a disciplined one. It translated intention into habit, errors into targeted practice, and metrics into meaningful feedback. In the end, mastery proved not to be a destination but a habit-forming process: small, steady work that reshaped how Elliot engaged with words and, through them, with others and himself. The mastery he acquired was practical and modest—faster fingers, cleaner prose—but it carried a quieter prize: a reminder that focused attention, even on small things, remakes a life. When he recommended the program to friends, he
The program offered drills that were stories in themselves. One module—called "Threads"—stitched short, evocative paragraphs into exercises. The text was varied: a sentence about a fisherman’s knot might reappear with a slightly different rhythm, then with added punctuation, then reversed into a question. Elliot found the repetition strangely absorbing. The passages were not just text to be typed; they became anchors, tiny worlds whose grammar his hands inhabited. Typing these fragments felt like learning to navigate alleys he’d never noticed in his hometown. Typing Master was a quiet presence. It provided only occasional auditory cues: a soft chime for improvement, a single low beep for repeated errors. Between the chime and the correction, a silence remained—an invitation to listen to his own progress. Elliot began to notice subtler changes in his life. Email replies arrived more promptly and with briefer, clearer sentences. He wrote a short story in a single weekend, surprising himself by the speed with which ideas flowed through fingers to screen. Notes that once festered as mental to-do lists were captured immediately, the act of typing making them feel less like obligations and more like recorded intentions. The software also reflected his attention back at him
Elliot discovered the program on a rainy Thursday in late autumn, the kind of day when even the city’s neon seemed to huddle under umbrellas. The ad on a forum—bold, minimal—promised speed, precision, and a quiet kind of mastery: Typing Master. He clicked because he wanted something small to fix, a skill that had once been tidy and useful before life unraveled into meetings, half-read books, and the anxious scrolling that replaced practice. What he found was not just a tool but a tutor with a pulse. The First Lessons: Rhythm and Attention The interface was unassuming: a dark window, warm monospace font, and a probationary lesson labeled "Foundations." The first exercises were almost insultingly simple—home row drills, measured repetitions, emphasis on posture—but they arrived with subtle insistence. The software listened. It recorded the tiny hesitations at the border between the F and J keys, the habit of resting the wrist a fraction too heavily, the tendency to glance at the keyboard whenever a sentence curved into difficulty.
Nice guide. Are you planning to add photos of the wiring and such?
Thanks for the reminder, I did have a couple of extra pictures to add.
Thanks for this very detailed guide. Now im with less money in my wallet, but an old Wanhao with a brand new SKR board 😀
For those who struggles to connect the stock wanhao i3 1.2 LCD display. I got it working by connecting the following pins:
pin 1 LCD CS –> 1.19 EXP 1
pin 2 Encoder B –> 3.25 EXP 2
pin 3 LCD Data –> 1.18 EXP 1
Pin 4 Encoder A–> 3.26 EXP 2
pin 5 LCD SCLK –> 1.20 EXP 1
pin 6 Encoder Button –> 0.28 EXP 1
pin 7 ESTOP –> I dont use that one- so did not try to find it
pin 8 Beeper –> 1.30 EXP 1
Pin 9 5v –> 5V EXP 1
pin 10 GND –> GND EXP 1
LCD pins should like this:
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10
Once again, thanks for this guide!
Awesome, thanks for the LCD pinout!
Thank You so Much for the Information … we are all remain indebted to You … Thank You …
What setting did you use?
Had several problems doing this with tmc 2130 and 2100.
Could not make the dual z work, tried lots of things. Ended up doing z steppers in paralell from one driver and upping its vref.
For some weird reason the steps per mm on z axis was off, had to make it 100 steps/mm for it to move correctly.
seems that the SKR doesnt support flashing firmware by octoprint without modifications which is a bit of a drag but then again it is pretty easy to do by sd card.
Not done with the build yet so more problems may occur.
hmm, in my wanhao i3 v.2.1, the z axis uses stepper motors with a maximum current of 0.47 amperes. I suspect that 0.76 is too much for them.
As I recall reading when I did the upgrade the Z motor amps need to be doubled if ran in parallel, I just did some Googleing and found that to be true. You could most likely cut this in half if using dual Z steppers. Thanks for pointing this out!
Hello, Thanks for a great guide but how should I connect the endstops ?
As far as I remember they endstops are plugged into the bottom two pins if looking at the picture posted. I didn’t change the endstop plugs, some people did. I just plugged em into the board and they fit fine for me, no issues.
Big thanks for writing this. Followed the instructions and only had a few hiccups. That being said, the crimper tool makes me want to outright murder someone.
No problem, glad it helped! What hiccups did you hit? Anything that I should note or update that caused them? And you are so right, that crimper has a learning curve.
This guide doesn’t work for me anymore. Please if anyone has a ready to go and complete bugfix folder they can upload for me you’d be saving me a fucking headache. Been at this for weeks since I got my replacement skr. First one and first time worked great for me.
What does not work? I haven’t tried this config yet but I have built and flashed SKR boards with Malin 2.X and this includes every thing you need.
Visual Studio gave me a hard time .. thank you utube. the debug version of Marlin was missing the Marlin.ini require to open the project with the MARLIN-2.0.X I was able to go and edit the cpu on platformio.ini than the Configuration.h and Configuration_adv.h ..
Great guide! I’m using it for my Maker Select v2.1 and I have the printer working 99% but I have one major problem I cannot figure out. The X axis is not homing properly. Instead of moving in the negative direction and stopping at the X endstop it moves in the positive direction about 5-10mm and sets that as the X home position. Any ideas? The Y and Z homing is perfect, only the issue with X
Have you tried inverting the direction? It has been a long while since I have fiddled with the firmware but there are a couple spots that you may need to play with. I would try inverting the X axis, either the driver itself or probably home direction. 1 should be the right side and -1 the left side I believe, flip flop whatever you have tried and see. If you have already tried this then I am not sure, I would hop on a Facebook group. I am in a few, some for BigTreeTech and a few for the Maker Select. The groups are active and a lot of people offer help. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help. But if you get it fixed please let me know how you did it.
#define INVERT_X_DIR true/false
and
#define X_HOME_DIR 1/-1
and
#define USE_XMIN_PLUG vs #define USE_XMAX_PLUG
Thanks for the quick response. I did try inverting before and that caused grinding. I might have a work around, if I push the x carriage against the endstop and home x it appears to home x properly. I’ll have to level the bed and try a test print to confirm.
Im probably going to give this a shot. Many thanks for the in-depth explanation beforehand. I appreciate the fact that you haven’t abandoned this post.
Just wanted to say thank you for this guide. Used it to upgrade my printer a few days back and this made it a lot easier to do. I made my own congfig.h and adv files but followed through with your changes for the most part and have been happy with how it’s gone. I got the TFT35 v3.0 and it was probably unneeded since I mostly use octopi, but I like it.
I also use an inductive probe, and that’s the only issue I really ran into. The z-endstop pins apparently have a pull up on them. This caused some issues, so I changed the pin for Z_MIN_PIN to P2_00 in pins_BTT_SKR_V1_3.h and plugged the signal wire into that pin on the board, which is the servos header right/yellow/orange pin. After doing that, it works like a charm.
Here’s the diagram showing the pin at the bottom. https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/613805/68263383-825d1500-000b-11ea-8401-5e8566dbd149.png
I made brackets for the SKR so you can access the USB and sd card externally
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4920438
How is this working for you long term? I am about to do the same exact thing after letting everything sit in a corner for 2 years…
I still use the printer and the SKR from this post, but along the way I dropped Marlin and adopted Klipper. If I had to do it all over again I would rethink how I mounted my printer permanently to the Ikea LACK table I used and the location of my Raspberry Pi, this makes it a pain to work on and move around. Other than that it has been great.
https://www.itsalllost.com/adventures-in-klipper/