Printrbot Talk Forum

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Wed-19-Sep

I can see this is going to be involved...I'll do my best to document the process. There's a lot of info out there - it's just not all in one place yet.

The goal of this mini project is to create a wireless printserver that you can connect to over a browser. This frees up your computer from being tied to the printrbot for the duration of a print. To accomplish this we'll be using a Raspberry Pi Model B equipped with a wifi dongle.

SAM_9063.JPG

== Index ==
1. Shopping List
* Raspberry Pi 512MB Revision B
* USB Wireless adapter (b/g/n) - I bought an Edimax
* SD Card - preferably class 10 or thereabouts...Unknown at this time if there are issues with XDHC cards. The wheezy raspbian image is ~2GB so at least a 4GB card is recommended
* 5v ~700ma (1500ma if you plan on powering other devices) power supply with a usb micro-b connector
*keyboard and monitor (with an hdmi or rca video input port) for the initial set up of your RPi. After you get SSH enabled you can shell into the RPi over the network, and can dump the monitor and keyboard.

2. Prepping your Pi
* I'll be doing this with a Macbook - if you're on a PC you'll need a terminal program to access your Pi via SSH so you don't need to set up a separate screen for it.
* Formatting your SD card (Mac)
* Adafruit Tutorial on setting up your RPi for the first time
* Configure your RP to recognize your SD Card

3. How to install Raspbian "wheezy"
* instructions for a Mac
* Instructions for Windows
* Download Raspbian
* Burning the Raspbian image to your SD Card

4. Setting up Octoprint
4a) Building from Source
4b) Downloading a readymade OctoPrint/Raspbian image

5. Configuring your Wireless Dongle (I'll go through all these and see which works for me - this will take some time)
* One setup video HERE
* Adafruit tutorial on setting up your Dongle on the command line HERE
* Another Tutorial HERE

**Sponsor**

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Wed-20-Sep

Setting up your SD card

You have to format the card as a single MS DOS FAT partition

On a Mac you can drop down to the command line via Terminal, or you can use the Disk Utility app

Screen Shot 2013-09-11 at 9.12.37 PM.png

Volume name is whatever you want it to be - format the SD card as a MS DOS FAT partition

Click Erase when you're ready and the disk will unmount and remount as it works through the formatting procedure.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Wed-20-Sep

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-09-Sep

After doing a little more research I think it would be best to try 2 ways of setting up Octoprint.

Option 1) Burn Raspbian and build and install Octoprint from source
Option 2) Download a premade OctoPi image

If you want to create a purpose-built wireless print server, then probably Option 2 will work. If you run a custom distro or want to customize your installation in any way, you will probably want to go with Option 1. I think the majority of us will go for Option 2 so that's where I will start.

Download OctoPi image HERE

This is the zip file that was downloaded at the time of this post:

Code: Select all: 2013-07-26-wheezy-octopi-0.6.zip 26-Aug-2013 06:51 643M

Drop down to a command line in Terminal and follow these steps:

1) First query the file system to obtain the raw device name of the SD Card. With the SD Card formatted and inserted type this:

Code: Select all: $ df -h

This was my output:

Code: Select all: Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/disk0s2 465Gi 390Gi 75Gi 84% / devfs 182Ki 182Ki 0Bi 100% /dev map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home /dev/disk1s1 7.4Gi 2.0Mi 7.4Gi 1% /Volumes/OCTOPRINT

The Filesystem device name is /dev/disk1s1 so the raw name is represented as /dev/rdisk1 (this is important make sure you understand this relationship). If the file system device name was /dev/disk3s1 the raw name would be /dev/rdisk3 got it?

2) Now unmount the sd card. You need to do this so you can overwrite the disk

Code: Select all: $ sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk1s1

3) To burn the image run this sudo command (you will need admin privileges to your machine). Change the location of the file and the device name to whatever yours turns out to be.

image name and directory: /Downloads/2013-07-26-wheezy-octopi-0.6.img
sd card raw device name: /dev/rdisk1

* You'll notice in the code below that the device name is rdisk1 and not just disk1 as in the video. In OSX there are 2 designations for device names one is an alias and one is the raw device name. Users have reported that writing to the raw device name is about 20 times faster on a class 4 SD card, so tl;dr - type what you see below.

Code: Select all: $ sudo dd bs=1m if=~/Downloads/2013-07-26-wheezy-octopi-0.6.img of=/dev/rdisk1

Type in your administrator password when prompted then simply wait for the image to burn. Do NOT interrupt the process or you will corrupt your SD card and have to start over.

Process takes about 5-10 minutes depending on the speed of the card. This card was a Sandisk 8G SDXC MicroSD card in an SD Card adapter.

You'll see the following output:

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 11.50.14 AM.png

As a last verification step - browse the SD card using File Manager and make sure the following files were burned:

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 1.01.18 PM.png

If you've made it to this point - eject your SD card and go ahead and insert the card into the RPi and power it up for the first time.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-10-Sep

Ok with the OctoPi/Raspbian image burned to the SD card, we're ready to do a first time set up. What we need to accomplish is the following:
* set up ssh
* configure the wireless dongle
* connect the rpi to the wireless network
* set up the rpi so when it reboots octoprint reloads

I'll be moving through the steps in Adafruit's Tutorial HERE

<verify> This step requires an external keyboard and monitor to get SSH running...once that's setup - simply connect the RPi to a power source and network cable

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-12-Sep

If you did everything right and the SD card was burned properly (note I did it wrong 3x before I realized my mistake with the raw device names), when you plug your RPi, you should see red and green lights flickering. Go ahead and connect a keyboard and monitor to the RPi and boot everything up.

You'll see a setup screen very similar to a BIOS setup screen and it is here we will configure the first set of features to take the process further.

Here's the RPi with power, keyboard and video connected

SAM_9064.JPG

Linux starts to boot once power is applied to the board

SAM_9065.JPG

You will launch into this initial setup screen:

SAM_9066.JPG

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-12-Sep

So let's spend a little time here and look at the available options: Remember this is a wireless printing specific distro so the configuration options and choices are being laid out as such.

The options I initially changed were the following:
1) Expand Filesystem (by default if you have greater than a 2GB card, only 2gb will partitioned - too lengthy to go into here, just make sure you select this option and let the configurator automatically expand the file system to use all the available space.

2) Change User Password - The default user for this distro is "pi" ... go ahead and set your password here...Once you log in for the first time, you can then go and add additional users as necessary.

5) Enable Camera - I don't have a Pi Cam but I may get one eventually, enabling this option enables the MJPG streamer so you can watch your print as you print it

8) Advanced Options. You'll need this to enable the SSH daemon so you can log into your Pi from another terminal (so you can dump the keyboard and monitor)

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-13-Sep

Hit one quick snag.

The distro uses Great Britain keyboards as a default. If you're in the US you will have to reconfigure the keyboard defaults so you can type without running into those silly translation errors.

At the command prompt type:

Code: Select all: sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

And then run through the prompts. I'm using an aluminum Mac keyboad so that's what I chose. I checked the list to see if there's a generic keyboard but I didn't find one so if in doubt - just try the IBM keyboards and that should work for you (If anyone does this with a different keyboard please report back).

More info HERE

At the next screen choose the keyboard layout - Select "OTHER"

At the screen for Country of Origin - Select "English (US)"

You'll come back to another Keyboard Layout screen showing all the layouts available for the English (US) set.
I chose English (Macintosh), there is a generic English one (1st item on the list) so you might try that one if you don't find any entries that match yours.

Next screen will be mapping ALT GR (i.e. >) I chose the default. If I run into trouble, I'll come back and tweak this setting:

Next screen will be to map the Compose key - I chose "No Compose Key"

Next screen is to configure CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE behavior to terminate the X Server - I chose "NO"

Once you're done - you'll need to reboot the device for the keyboard changes to take.

type

Code: Select all: sudo shutdown -r now

-r directive halts the system and reboots, "now" means shutdown now

This step is mandatory - if you don't do this you won't be able to type in half your commands

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-14-Sep

Ok moving on to configuring the wireless adapter.

Reference Articles:
http://www.savagehomeautomation.com/pro ... dapte.html

At this point you should NOT have the usb dongle installed. You'll configure the adapter, then install the device, then reboot.

This part is tricky depending on how you set your router up and what authentication model you're using (i.e. WEP (blech) WPA, WPA 2 Personal, or WPA 2 Enterprise) Each have their own configuration parameters. Mine is "WPA 2 Personal", so my configurations will reflect those options.

At the command prompt type:

Code: Select all: sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

That will launch the file interfaces in the "vi" editor...if you're not familiar with the vi commands - just use nano - same difference just a little easier to use.

You should see the following:

Code: Select all: fix this

Replace it with this:
<edit> I need to correct this code

Where ssid is the name of your wireless network and password is your password.

At this point - power cycle your Raspberry Pi, insert the wireless dongle then power it back up.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-14-Sep

Ok hit another snag.

Raspberry Pi is very power sensitive...apparently a single macbook usb plug wasn't enough to power the usb dongle and a usb keyboard. I don't have a powered usb hub, so what I'm going to do is make sure SSH is running, unplug the keyboard, plug in the wifi adapter, and then configure everything remotely from a terminal on my mac.

This actually works better anyway since I can dump the keyboard and monitor and reclaim some deskspace.

Before you unplug everything - go ahead and connect a network cable to the raspberry pi, then restart it. Watch the boot up sequence and look for the IP address that gets assigned to your Raspberry Pi. Once you have that, go ahead and open up a Terminal window on your Mac.

At the command line type

Code: Select all: ssh pi@192.168.2.15 (replace that IP address with the IP address assigned to your Pi)

Enter the password you configured for the pi account.

Now type

Code: Select all: sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

And confirm that you see the following:

Obviously replace SSID with your wireless broadcast id and psk with your wifi password

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 5.13.53 PM.png

One additional step fromthe savage home automation website was to configure the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
please note - I'm not 100% if this is necessary but I'm going to leave it in for now.

So at the command line type
sudo vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

and add the following lines:

Code: Select all: network={ ssid="_SSID_" proto=RSN key_mgmt=WPA-PSK pairwise=CCMP TKIP group=CCMP TKIP psk="_WPA_SHARED_KEY_" }

where network is your wireless network ID
and psk - is your shared key/password

This is what my file looks like:

Once you have all that done go ahead and power cycle your Raspberry Pi and watch the Wireless Dongle. If you did everything right - you should see a flashing blue light within the dongle:

SAM_9082.JPG

When you reboot - type in

Code: Select all: iwconfig

You should see something like this:

Code: Select all: root@octopi:~# iwconfig wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"rcn" Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: C4:3D:C7:6A:48:82 Bit Rate:150 Mb/s Sensitivity:0/0 Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:****-****-****-****-****-****-****-**** Security mode:open Power Management:off Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=100/100 Noise level=0/100 Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. root@octopi:~#

To get the IP of the device type

Code: Select all: ifconfig

You should see this entry for wlan0

Code: Select all: wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 80:1f:02:b6:99:48 inet addr:192.168.2.22 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1001 errors:0 dropped:1126 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:655 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:131924 (128.8 KiB) TX bytes:87339 (85.2 KiB) root@octopi:~#

IP is 192.168.2.22

This is how we're going to access the device for now until I figure out how to configure the hostname.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-16-Sep

Woohoo - getting ready for the moment of truth.

Connect everything in this order:
* Go ahead and power up your printrbot
* Connect your Raspberry Pi to the Printrboard via the supplied USB cable
* Connect up your Raspberry Pi to a power source

Using the IP of the wireless adapter assigned in a previous step open up a browser and type the IP address in the URL bar.

For this example we will use 192.168.2.22

When the page loads you're going to see a prompt to create an administrative account to run commands from:

I'll let you read that warning...We want to make sure our installation is secure so we're going to be good Printrbotians and set up access controls to make sure the ne'er do wells don't get access to our fancy printers and print off something as nefarious as boobies while we're not looking.

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 6.09.30 PM.png

For this setup I will create the admin account "printradmin" and assign my own password:

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 6.14.59 PM.png

* troubleshooting baud rate connections...250,000 and 115,200 don't seem to work - it just hangs...

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-17-Sep

Checking the Octoprint logs - I see a connect command then it just keeps sending M105 over and over again with no response from the printrboard (running stock firmware from PBHQ)

Code: Select all: Changing monitoring state from 'Offline' to 'Opening serial port' Connecting to: /dev/ttyAMA0 Connected to: Serial<id=0x2880b30, open=True>(port='/dev/ttyAMA0', baudrate=250000, bytesize=8, parity='N', stopbits=1, timeout=2.0, xonxoff=False, rtscts=False, dsrdtr=False), starting monitor Changing monitoring state from 'Opening serial port' to 'Connecting' Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105 Send: M105

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-18-Sep

Taking a break - been at this a solid 12 hours...

let me know if you guys find anything about those connection issues.

I'm not sure /dev/tty/AMA0 is the right usb port for the serial connection to the printrboard...I plugged it in and out and my list of devices didn't change which means the rpi doesn't see it or I may need to boot everything in some weird order...

Going to be looking at this with fresh eyes a little later.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-19-Sep

Woohooo it works!!!

SAM_9083.JPG

I had to reboot the printer a few times then the right tty port finally popped up.

/dev/ttyACM0

Once that became active I was able to connect to the printer

Set baudrate to 115200 in the octoprint config, choose /dev/ttyACM0 as the serial port and hit connect.

Screen Shot 2013-09-12 at 8.37.56 PM.png

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-19-Sep

Last step is send a file to the Raspberry Pi for printing. Using Repetier Host or Slic3r or the the slicer of your choice, load up your object, slice it, then export the gcode to a file. Upload the .gcode file to the print server and you're off to the races

Ok NOW i'm taking a break lol.

That finished enough for you Lemm?

by **RetireeJay** » 2013-Sep-Thu-20-Sep

That's a huge amount of work! Congratulations!

For those of us who have never seen a raspberry pi, can you give us a very simple block diagram or 50,000 foot view of what it is that you accomplished? Because I'm a little confused.

You said at the outset that this project would free up the computer from being tied to the printer. Does that mean:
(1) The computer is still running the Printrbot, but it's doing it from a remote location via Wi-Fi networking ("freed up" = not tied to a physical location)? or
(2) The raspberry pi has taken the place of the computer and is running the Printrbot

If it's (1) then I think I understand - although it seems like a heck of a complicated process to merely extend a virtual serial port.

If it's (2) then lots more questions arise
(2a) Why not use the SD card instead of going to the trouble with the raspberry pi?
(2b) If the raspberry pi is really "running" the Printrbot, then that means the Printrbot doesn't know the difference between the r-pi and a full computer? Does that mean that Repetier is running on the r-pi? Or is there some other program that feeds G-code commands to the Printrbot? This requires a software handshake so the Printrbot's limited instruction queue doesn't get slammed.
(2c) So your printer is tuned up and set so perfectly that you don't need to attend to it at all when the print is getting set up, e.g. to clear away oozed bird's nests from the bed before the print really gets going? And what do you do after a print is finished? Do your prints pop off the bed so easily that you can "wipe" them out of the way with the extruder before you start another one?

I apologize for my ignorance. I know some of my questions sound a little skeptical, but since you went to all that work there must be some very good answers and some perspectives that I have overlooked. Again, I congratulate you on your expertise and your persistence. Rep points coming your way!

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-21-Sep

No no - great questions Retiree Jay.

I have to clean up those posts - so thanks for pointing out the parts that needed some clarification.

(2) The raspberry pi has taken the place of the computer and is running the Printrbot

The raspberry pi is a $35 standalone computer that takes the place of the $2000 macbook pro that was permanently tethered to the printrbot. It's functioning as a wireless print server that takes the place of repetier host with a few limitations. The idea here is that you take your primary computer, load up an stl, slice it, then send the sliced gcode to the raspberry pi for printing over wifi (no more cables yay!).

I have 2 macbooks, one in the office and one in the "printer room". I would work out my models on the faster macbook, then wirelessly copy them to the macbook in the printer room. I would then walk to the printer room, load up repetier host, add the stl file, place the object, slice it, then hit print.

I could have just as easily continued to do that - but I think we can all agree that permanently tethering a multicore laptop to a 3D printer to process simple vector commands is a little overkill.

Anyway, once you send it, your primary computer's job is done and the raspberry pi takes over all the printing functions. This particular print server has some very interesting features in addition to just processing gcode.

1) It has a built in web server, so within your network, you can load up the web page and view the progress of your print from anything that has a web browser, your iphone, an ipad, android tablet or other computer for instance.
2) It has support for web cams, so you can actually SEE the print from anywhere. With some tweaking to your routers, you can even connect to this printer in a secure fashion over the internet. Say you have a 6 hour print and have to run out for some Magic Hat #9's, while you're at the cashier you can load up the web page on your iphone and check the progress of your print

(2a) Why not use the SD card instead of going to the trouble with the raspberry pi?

This is an option of course. I wanted a wireless solution that didn't require plugging anything in or taking anything out. With this setup - the whole process of sending a print job to the printer is a point and click operation. This is especially useful for people who put their 3D printers in their basement, but work out of an office in another part of their house, or for folks that have one laptop and have to free it up to do other things during those marathon print sessions.

(2b) If the raspberry pi is really "running" the Printrbot, then that means the Printrbot doesn't know the difference between the r-pi and a full computer? Does that mean that Repetier is running on the r-pi? Or is there some other program that feeds G-code commands to the Printrbot?

That's correct, the pi now controls the printrboard. I honestly haven't looked deep enough into the program to see how it's doing it, but really what's happening is whatever is in the octoprint distro is interfacing with the Marlin firmware on the printrboard to send and subsequently process the gcode commands.

(2c) So your printer is tuned up and set so perfectly that you don't need to attend to it at all when the print is getting set up, e.g. to clear away oozed bird's nests from the bed before the print really gets going? And what do you do after a print is finished? Do your prints pop off the bed so easily that you can "wipe" them out of the way with the extruder before you start another one?

I saw someone do this but not with this setup - I'd imagine you could accomplish that with the right code but this isn't the tool for that job I think. Really all this was meant to do was replace the macbook pro with a dedicated print server that's permanently tethered to the printrbot.

ps - hah - no apologies necessary - this community was built on all the hard work you and the others have contributed over the years, I'm happy to have done my part to contribute to our twisted little family of tinkerers

by **gyronictonic** » 2013-Sep-Fri-07-Sep

Great stuff Mocha

I only got as far as installing and running Pronterface on the Raspberry Pi. The OctoPrint is next on my list but probably not after MakerFaire NYC.

When I was setting up my RPi, I was able to use the NOOBs installer where you basically unzip the NOOBs installer files onto the SD card and plug it in the RPi. It boots up and lists about 6 different OS to install. This might be easier for those setting up their RPi.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Fri-07-Sep

I'm jealous - I want to go to makerfaire just too much going on right now - let me know if you blog about the event anywhere I'd love to follow along.

The installation procedures are a bear I'll admit - at least the path I chose anyway. I saw 3 ways to do it, started with the hardest, stopped midstream, and went with the Octopi release instead. I stopped short of using the NOOBS installer out of pride because I wanted to see what was getting loaded rather than doing a blind install but that may be the path for a lot of folks that aren't familiar with 'nix systems. We are after all trying to drive adoption and make it easier for people.

I'll take a look at the procedure for the noobs installer and see if I can document that as well. I'm going to go ahead and order the camera for this board so I can come full circle on the build. I'd only seen maybe half a dozen other people do this project and I want to raise that number substantially because I think this is such a nifty project (not to mention releases your primary computer from its manufacturing chains).

Time permitting I'll do a setup video that walks through all the steps - documentation's nice, but pictures are better and video's gold in that respect.

by **Mooselake** » 2013-Sep-Sun-09-Sep

A way back you mentioned a lack of USB power. Don't know if this'll help but the older RPi's had a mod to bypass a current limiting resistors.

I've got one from the second batch, missed the first because of their server overload crash. Doesn't Octoprint need the later larger ram versions?

Kirk

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Mon-10-Sep

I'm not entirely sure I got hit by that USB power problem. I'm running the latest revision of the Raspberry Pi with 512mb of ram which was what was suggested by the Octoprint docs.

The issue I was running into came down to the wlan0 configs in /etc/network/interfaces. I tried a couple of iterations of configs, but the one that worked included a power management directive (see way above).

I was fine moving to a terminal connection overssh anyway since I had to free up some deskspace. I was using my FPV ground station as a monitor/keyboard for the raspberry pi.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Tue-23-Sep

Let's forget for a moment that a $35 computer is now controlling my printrbot, I have to say the coding behind Octoprint is just some of the best design wise I've ever seen. From a UX perspective it uses all the latest thinking in web design and is just so damn well put together

. Can't wait to see where it evolves to.

So I sent the first print job to the new Raspberry Wireless print server and it's happily chugging away. I went ahead and sprung for the camera as well so I'll be able to monitor my prints remotely but that can wait.

First things first - we need a proper case for the Raspberry Pi. Funny thing happened here...my RPi was on the floor next to its power source, and the Macbook I just replaced it with was leaning on the coffee table. I started my print and the vibes were just enough to knock the laptop over and fall right on top of the Pi...No damage thankfully, but I'm pretty sure I hurt that macbook's feelings. Anyway - we need a proper case... I went with this one:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:79036

Since it's mountable and just looks cool.

So, fire up repetier host (or the slicer of your choice) from the comfort of...well anywhere in the house that you choose now that your laptop's free

Load up the file and slice it:

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.55.59 PM.jpg

Then hit the disk icon to save the file to a gcode file (yes you can do this from Slic3r too - I'm just used to repetier host)

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.55.09 PM.png

Then drag the file to the webpage and either upload it to local memory or the Pi's SD card. (Wow what a cool feature)

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.54.21 PM.png

The page will list all the files loaded on the Pi (very handy), just select the file you want to print and hit the print icon.

Screen Shot 2013-09-17 at 11.54.07 PM.png

That will load the job in the print panel at which point all your status indicators will populate. You can pause and resume from that panel, and if you want you can check the gcode viewer to see where in transit the head is, or if you went to the trouble of installing a camera you'll see the last image saved

It took some work to get this going but wow - what a great addition

by **Lemm** » 2013-Sep-Wed-02-Sep

awesome thanks. Ordered a pi today :oops:

by **jafenske** » 2013-Sep-Wed-11-Sep

I think this is a cool idea. I was wondering how having to make adjustments to the z axis height is accomplished is prior to printing. Thanks

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Wed-11-Sep

Mechanically and via Gcode in the printer settings, or eeprom settings panel.

The idea is
1) get as close as you can mechanically by tweaking the z axis screw
2) then fine tune via the M206 command, or editing the eeprom settings directly from repetier host (if you're on windows - that doesn't work on mac)

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Thu-12-Sep

For anyone following along - I ran into a snag saving to the SD card. I think it's a permissions issue, so if you manage to get this up and running - just save it to the Pi's local memory until I get this worked out - or if you do get sd card saves to work - share that info back

by **Lemm** » 2013-Sep-Fri-16-Sep

Hey

my PI is working too

. Really easy with your tut.
U can also access the octoprint site via http://octopi instead of typing the ip.
What I miss is controlling the printspeed manually like in repetier host and some gcode commands on after stopping a print.

edit: found the M220 command for setting the speed

Code: Select all: M220:set speed factor override percentage Example: M220 S80 S<factor in percent>- set speed factor override percentage

works fine

by **Lemm** » 2013-Sep-Sun-06-Sep

this octoprint is very cool

I found a way to include my favorite settings in the controlpanel

by editing the config.yaml you can include some settings (speedcontrol, fancontrol ...)
open the config.yaml

Code: Select all: vi ~/.octoprint/config.yaml

I add this in the last line of the config

Code: Select all: controls: - name: Fan type: section children: - name: Enable Fan type: parametric_command command: M106 S%(speed)s input: - name: Speed (0-255) parameter: speed default: 255 - name: Disable Fan type: command command: M107 - name: Speed type: section children: - name: set type: parametric_command command: M220 S%(speed)s input: - name: Speed (0-255) parameter: speed default: 100 - name: default type: command command: M220 S100

after reloading the pi (and maybe strg+F5 the octoprint tab) you should have these buttons

octo.JPG

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Sep-Sun-16-Sep

I love mine.

The process of sending iterations is a little time consuming (save, export stl, load stl, slice, save gcode, upload, print) - but I gladly pay the price to have it wireless.

My camera just came in so I'll be working on setting up the time lapse monitor - I just have to get some LEDs shining on the bed first.

by **foosel** » 2013-Sep-Mon-05-Sep

Just registered to say "Thank you!" to Mochaboy, both for the great step-by-step instructions as well as the positive feedback

Always makes my day when people actually find the thing I've been spending my weekends on useful and also enjoy using it

If any of you run into any kind of problems with OctoPrint, please don't hesitate to file a ticket in the bug tracker. I'm also trying to document the most common pitfalls in an FAQ.

Can't post links here (forum claims too spammy), so just go to the project on Github for all you wiki/faq and bug tracker needs.

by **Decipher** » 2013-Oct-Mon-22-Oct

I'm curious if anyone has mounted or has thoughts on mounting the Pi Cam somewhere on their Printrbot.

I just got my Pi Cam today, and have the Printrbot Jr v2, and I figure the best place to mount the cam would be on the Bed/X-axis, so that in the timelapses the print is always centered, but the obvious issue with that is that the cable for the cam is quite short and I don't particularly want to mount the Pi itself on the bed as it's quite bulky and the power and USB cable (and in my case the Ethernet cable) are likely to give in the way at some point.

by **Lemm** » 2013-Oct-Tue-01-Oct

hey
I'm just working on a baseplate for the pi + cam and some other stuff. I don't wanted to place the cam on the bot itself, but I found these balls on thingiverse http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5578 . I think there are really good to build a cam tower which you can move around.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Oct-Tue-10-Oct

I'd thought about it - but I've seen time lapse shots with the camera attached to the frame and they're awful. You need a LOT of bracing/vibration absorption otherwise it's a worthless endeavor.

What I plan on doing is mounting it to a gooseneck but off the print table, basically completely isolated from the printer. The thing with timelapse, it's fun to do once or twice, but after you tick mark that off your bucket list - all you really need (in my opinion) is to see that the print hasn't gone nuclear or lifted off the platform.

by **Decipher** » 2013-Oct-Tue-15-Oct

Glad I asked the question, I assumed that being on the print bed would some things, but you do make a fair point.

I found the following mount, designed around a RPi camera enclosure: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:139873

by **Lemm** » 2013-Oct-Wed-01-Oct

That's what I want to do

pi assembled.JPG

The tower stands next to the printr. The Ball Links are flexible so I can move them a bit.

by **jafenske** » 2013-Oct-Wed-09-Oct

I got my Raspberry Pi and camera a couple of weeks ago and I really like them. I also bought a LCD from Adafruit and hooked it up. That was also fun. However, I have had a really difficult time getting the camera to work. I got the camera to work using Rasperian, but I couldn't get mjpg streamer to work. So, I switched to octcopi and now the camera doesn't work. The light on the camera comes on but nothing. So I switched back to Rasperian and the camera doesn't work now on Rasperian either. Anyway, the camera should be really easy. Has anyone else had any issues?

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Oct-Wed-10-Oct

I bought the camera but I haven't connected it yet - just haven't had the opportunity. I'll report back when it's operational.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Oct-Wed-10-Oct

Decipher wrote:Glad I asked the question, I assumed that being on the print bed would some things, but you do make a fair point.

I found the following mount, designed around a RPi camera enclosure: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:139873

I say go for it and don't let me dissuade you from anything you think is even remotely interesting to you. Whatever you do figure out though - share that back

That's all I ask

by **opiesche** » 2013-Nov-Tue-12-Nov

If you've got a webcam hooked up and recognized, you can simply

$sudo apt-get install vlc

in a terminal on the Pi, and then use VLC to capture the webcam and stream it via HTTP. That way you can create a WMV or H.264 stream, or whatever works best for you. This should create a WMV stream capturing the first video device found:

$cvlc v4l2:// :v4l2-vdev="/dev/video0" :sout='#transcode{vcodec=WMV2,vb=800,scale=1,acodec=wma2,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:http{dst=:8080/printrbot.wmv}' :sout-keep

Then open a web browser to

http://192.168.3.14/printrbot.wmv

Where 192.168.3.14 is the IP address of your Pi, to start streaming the video. I haven't tried this on my Pi, and it may need additional setup to use the Pi's hardware video encoder, but it could Just Work(tm). Changing the scale parameter to 0.5 would halve the video size before encoding and should improve performance.

by **opiesche** » 2013-Nov-Tue-13-Nov

On the webcam not working issue, can you run

$lsusb

on your Pi and post the output here? That should list your webcam including a device identifier. From there, we can go and see what firmware it needs

You should probably also try doing

$sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

And then reboot when it's all done.

That'll update the OS and all software to the latest versions available in the repositories, and could solve your problem if the device's firmware was added to the kernel. Note that you can do this via the GUI as well, but I'm assuming you're connecting to your Pi via SSH (and it's easier to post commands here than explain GUI workflows

)

A little background: many devices such as webcams or WiFi adapters don't have their own firmware onboard. This is a cost savings measure to save the bit of ROM or flash memory the device would need to store its own firmware. The OS loads a driver, and the driver pushes the firmware to the device's RAM everytime the device is connected.
There's a couple dozen different chipsets with their own unique firmware. The device identifier maps to a specific firmware needed, and the kernel picks it that way and uploads it to the device. If the device identifier isn't found, no firmware is uploaded and the device goes unrecognized and unusable. This should only be the case for a handful of devices - almost all should work out of the box these days (I've got a Logitech webcam and it's recognized automatically).
If you happen to have one of those that isn't recognized, you can normally find the necessary firmware online, drop it in the right place, and Bob's your mother's brother. Doing a full software upgrade (as shown above) also can solve this problem if it updates the kernel with a new one that comes with the necessary firmware.

by **opiesche** » 2013-Nov-Tue-14-Nov

Oh, and (at some point I'll learn to think before posting so I don't spam threads with post after post after post...

) it may also be helpful to

$sudo apt-get install webmin

As well (no reboot needed). Then you can connect to your Pi via https://192.168.3.14:10000, and administer the system (install packages, schedule commands, change bootup and shutdown sequence, etc. etc.) via web interface. All of this works via SSH as well, but for some tasks it's just nice to be able to web-administer a system

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Nov-Wed-14-Nov

Thanks for the walkthrough - I'll give it a shot...Time's been thin since the arrival of our second child

by **eckerput** » 2013-Dec-Mon-10-Dec

Mochaboy I just wanted to say thanks for the guide. I setup my Octoprint this weekend (although I know nothing about Linux it only took an hour or so with your guide). It's working perfectly and replaces a soon to be obsolete old windows XP laptop. I've yet to get wireless or a webcam working, but I haven't really tried that hard yet. It prints great though and it's nice to be able to control and monitor prints on my iPod Touch from anywhere in the house.

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Dec-Mon-10-Dec

Right on brother.

I wrote that guide with folks like you in mind since there was a huge chasm between the existing docs and first time user's abilities. Setting up the image is the easiest part, it's everything else that trips first time folks up.

I need to revisit this and update the to-dos I left for myself.

Enjoy!

by **magikh0e** » 2013-Dec-Mon-21-Dec

Very awesome use of a raspberry pi. Thx for posting!

by **eckerput** » 2013-Dec-Tue-12-Dec

Okay looking at my setup, it seems like I shouldn't need two power cords. Has anyone used a spare molex connector from their Printrbot power supply to power the Raspberry Pi? I was thinking of buying or building something like this http://www.coolerguys.com/840556096177.html. Would this work?

by **opiesche** » 2013-Dec-Tue-13-Dec

The Model B is rated at 700mA @ 5V. I'd think the printrboard should be able to power it - the Pi is powered via a MiniUSB plug though, so you'd need an adapter as well (and I'd always want to check which wire from the Pb goes where on the Pi, just to be sure). But yes, it should work

by **eckerput** » 2013-Dec-Tue-13-Dec

FYI, I just got this http://www.coolerguys.com/840556096177.html and it is working great for powering my Raspberry Pi using the same ATX power supply that powers my LC. The wiring is much simpler. Once I get my wireless working and affix my Pi to the spool holder the whole thing will be quite compact and relatively wireless.

by **skyhigh** » 2013-Dec-Tue-13-Dec

A couple of the steps seem to be missing, or say things like 'fix this'. Will the tutorial still work without them?

by **eckerput** » 2013-Dec-Thu-11-Dec

Just skipping the steps which have yet to be detailed worked fine for me. You can also find some good details in the links Mochaboy has in the sections. That said, I haven't tried to get wireless working yet so I can't vouch for that section.

by **skyhigh** » 2013-Dec-Thu-12-Dec

Well, I got it working with wireless. Thanks for the guide!

by **Mochaboy** » 2013-Dec-Thu-20-Dec

sorry bout that guys - this darn competition has been absolutely consuming my every waking moment. Yes it will work with out those steps - those were just verification steps...I'll get back to updating this soon.

by **DumpRun** » 2014-Jan-Tue-23-Jan

Hey Mochaboy, I'm having the same issue you had with getting the right serial connection to show up. I keep on getting dev/ttyAMA0. What sequence did you have to restart things to get it to show ACM0?

Disregard! Turns out I am a total NOOB and was plugging in my webcam instead of my 3d printer... I think it's about time I clean up my desktop's wiring....

by **Mochaboy** » 2014-Jan-Wed-00-Jan

I'm going on memory here so take this with a grain of salt.

1) power up printer (wait like 10-15 seconds for it to complete its bootloader cycle)
2) power up rpi - give it about 60 seconds to boot up fully
3) connect the pi to the printrboard then load up the webpage
4) It should just pop up

option 2
* connect everything
* power everything up connected all at once

I can't say for sure what the original issue was but right now I have everything connected into a power strip, so one switch turns on power supply, printer, and the pi and everything just works.

by **DumpRun** » 2014-Jan-Wed-14-Jan

Yup, as my post said it was a user error, but thanks anyways!

I have yet to be able to get my WIFI dongle (a generic rtl8188cus model) to work with my Pi, but I managed to hook it up and use it via an ethernet connection so I'm more than pleased with it right now! I love this mod!!!

by **girlontherocks** » 2014-Mar-Wed-03-Mar

Thanks Mochaboy!

I ended up building octoprint in my already installed version of Raspbian. I went through a bunch of customizing to get the pi to show up on my local mac network (via afp) and I didn't want to have to do that again.

My biggest hang up was that after I got OctoPrint running, I couldn't figure out how to access the settings - and it wasn't appearing in the OctoPrint menu. The config file was almost totally empty. Turns out, even though you set up a username and password, You still have to log in! Or at least I did.

by **rlamar** » 2014-Jul-Wed-13-Jul

Nice writeup, good work.

At one point you say that you are using the firmware "provided by PBHQ", which I assume means 'whatever firmware they installed in the factory.' Later you say that you are using Marlin firmware. Right now I am getting the repeated M105 with no apparent response from the printer (I've tried booting things in different orders, the whole shebang). I flashed the printer according to the "How to Reflash FIrmware" instructions at Printrbot's Help site when I first assembled my Printrbot Simple, and have been using it successfully with Repetier.

1) Is there any expectation that I should be able to use OctoPi with my current firmware, or must I reflash with Marlin?
2) Is there a compiled release of Marlin available? I have found it on github, but that site only seems to provide the source, with no link to a binary.

by **RetireeJay** » 2014-Jul-Wed-15-Jul

Printrbot firmware is Marlin. Of course, there are hundreds of branches of the Marlin software, so that doesn't narrow it down enough.

Here is the Github page where you can find many (most? all?) of the firmwares used in Printrbots. https://github.com/Printrbot/Marlin/releases

If you do not have a Metal Simple, then I recommend the "Unified v3" version. For each version listed, there is a button to download the ".hex" file - that's the pre-compiled version you want.

by **rlamar** » 2014-Jul-Wed-22-Jul

Thanks a bunch, Jay. That was not at all clear when I sought the proper firmware to flash to my Simple 1405, in June. Printrbot provides instructions, but there was no versioning information that I could find (The file is simply named, "Simple Firmware.hex"). I wish I had a number or description for what I used, to compare with your recommendation. I will probably not try reflashing for several days, as I am in the middle of a large print job, and do not wish to delay things with recalibration.

If the firmware is already some flavor of Marlin, do you have any advice on my apparent difficulty in connecting? Octoprint seems to find the printer's serial port well enough, but the printer apparently does not respond to the M105 command.

by **benniestacks** » 2014-Sep-Tue-19-Sep

For anyone else who's having an issue with octoprint not finding your printrbot you may need a stronger power supply on your printrbot. I noticed that a green light was blinking in my printrbot jr which indicated power issue. After replacing my power supply everything works perfectly now.

Great post @Mochaboy I would have been lost without this post

by **ei8htohms** » 2014-Oct-Sat-11-Oct

Finally set this up for my GO! v.1 and it is awesome. Thanks for putting together this guide!

by **eckerput** » 2015-Jan-Sat-11-Jan

For anyone who is wondering here is how you update your Octoprint installation.

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wik ... topi-image

by **ei8htohms** » 2015-Jan-Sat-12-Jan

eckerput wrote:For anyone who is wondering here is how you update your Octoprint installation.

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wik ... topi-image

You must be reading my mind (or my G+ posts) as I just asked this on the OctoPrint community on G+. Thanks! I'll give this a shot.

...........................................

[G+ repost]

Ok, I followed the "SSH under Windows" instructions from here:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-ra ... er-windows

And the "How can I switch the branch of the OctoPrint installation on my OctoPi image?" instructions from here (I chose OctoPi < 0.9.0, no clue if that was correct) from here:

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wik ... -will-work

And it seemed to have worked in a more or less "charm-like" fashion. Psyched to tinker and break something! :-)

by **teicher** » 2015-Jan-Sat-16-Jan

ei8htohms wrote:
eckerput wrote:F
And the "How can I switch the branch of the OctoPrint installation on my OctoPi image?" instructions from here (I chose OctoPi < 0.9.0, no clue if that was correct) from here:

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wik ... -will-work

And it seemed to have worked in a more or less "charm-like" fashion. Psyched to tinker and break something!

If you are running the current releases, you should follow the "OctoPi >= 0.9.0" instructions.

I love octoprint. So glad my laptop isn't stuck to the printer all the time.

by **ei8htohms** » 2015-Jan-Sat-18-Jan

Well, that would be the question then wouldn't it? I couldn't figure out how to tell which version I was on. I was using an OctoPi image from 6-8 months ago (if I recall correctly). At any rate, it seems to have worked so...

Agreed about not having the pc tied to the printer. And with the new integration in Slic3r it's an even smoother work flow.

by **teicher** » 2015-Jan-Sun-08-Jan

Its not easy to find the version, but if you check the bottom left corner of the web page you'll see it in grey font against a white background.

You might consider updating the OS on the octopi image, too

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

will do that.

by **bcrazycramer** » 2015-Feb-Tue-18-Feb

I would like to try Octoprint but I'm not able to get growl notifications working. I have Octoprint setup on a Raspi B+, but when I launch Octoprint I don't see the growl plugin loaded.

by **mrorange26** » 2015-Mar-Tue-13-Mar

Is there a easy way to make cura work on octoprint also how do I centre my print in gcode viewer,Im using a delta printer and the print is alway in the bottom left corner off the bed on the viewer.

by **Corey Warren** » 2015-Mar-Tue-18-Mar

mrorange26 wrote:Is there a easy way to make cura work on octoprint also how do I centre my print in gcode viewer,Im using a delta printer and the print is alway in the bottom left corner off the bed on the viewer.

I'm curious about Cura on Octopi, also. And, is it able to handle multiple slicing profiles? If it can't handle multiple profiles than it is isn't going to be much use to me. Based on what I see of the interface, I don't think they made any accommodations for multiple profiles.

Has anyone played with Multiple Raspberry Pi's running Octopi on the same network? Are there any issue there?

by **teicher** » 2015-Mar-Wed-19-Mar

Corey Warren wrote:I'm curious about Cura on Octopi, also. And, is it able to handle multiple slicing profiles? If it can't handle multiple profiles than it is isn't going to be much use to me. Based on what I see of the interface, I don't think they made any accommodations for multiple profiles.

You can have multiple cura profiles for slicing on the current 1.2 dev branch. When you upload the STL, it'll let you choose the profile you wish to use. (It will also let you choose the slicer you wish to use, although I've only seen CuraEngine working. Not sure how to get slic3r configured....)

by **Corey Warren** » 2015-Mar-Mon-11-Mar

I finally got Cura installed and functional on my Raspberry Pi running OctoPrint. Now, I can drag an .stl file into OcoPrint and it will slice it. I did not go with the current 1.2 dev as my knowledge of Linux is very limited.

My current issue is when I upload the .stl file it doesn't center the object. I places it towards the upper, right of the print bed and if it a large object (Raspberry pi case size) it spills over to areas my nozzle cannot reach. I can't seem to find the reason or fix to this issue.

Might anyone have any insight to this issue or point me in the right direction?

by **teicher** » 2015-Apr-Wed-19-Apr

Corey Warren wrote:I finally got Cura installed and functional on my Raspberry Pi running OctoPrint. Now, I can drag an .stl file into OcoPrint and it will slice it. I did not go with the current 1.2 dev as my knowledge of Linux is very limited.

My current issue is when I upload the .stl file it doesn't center the object. I places it towards the upper, right of the print bed and if it a large object (Raspberry pi case size) it spills over to areas my nozzle cannot reach. I can't seem to find the reason or fix to this issue.

Might anyone have any insight to this issue or point me in the right direction?

I was going to suggest you check the machine settings for your cura profile and see if you have the center set to 0,0 (It might show up as the object_center_x, object_center_ params in the ini file), but I just checked mine and didn't see it in there.

by **Mooselake** » 2015-Apr-Thu-07-Apr

Has anybody tried a Pi 2 yet?

Kirk

by **teicher** » 2015-Apr-Thu-09-Apr

Mooselake wrote:Has anybody tried a Pi 2 yet?

Kirk

Yes, I've been running octoprint dev 1.2.x with a Pi2 for several weeks now. Was drop dead easy, just pulled the SD card from my B+ and plugged it into the Pi2. Works great!

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