Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

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JohnnyRobot
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Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by JohnnyRobot » Mon Mar 09, 2015 5:45 am

I took a trip to the electronics store today. I'm not sure how it happened, but I somehow ended up purchasing a Raspberry Pi.

Anyway... A few days ago, I saw this tutorial video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzN_MwunmE. I've even seen some chit-chat in this forum about OctoPrint. I figured I'd try it out.

It was an easy setup. It only took me about an hour. So far it seems pretty cool. Here are my observations.

The Pros:
  • Easy setup.
  • HH:MM Print time remaining indicator.
  • Time lapse control and web streaming capability.
  • No longer need my laptop connected to the printer.
  • Sent Prints over WiFi!!!
  • Great web based interface.
The Cons:
  • Another potential layer of failure. (maybe just because it's new to me..?)
  • No dedicated jogging buttons. (You must first click the desired increment, THEN the desired direction)
  • No dedicated extrude/retract buttons (You must first type the desired amount of extrude/retract, then press the desired button)
  • Slow jogging speeds.
  • Must save prints to gcode, then transfer over. (Not a big deal, just another step...)
Is anyone using this regularly? Any tips for an OctoPrint newbie?
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jsc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jsc » Mon Mar 09, 2015 6:15 am

Edit your Printer Profile under Settings to change your jogging speeds. I like OctoPrint because printing on my main computer would sometimes hang up when a USB drive started to spin up. I've also set it up (on a Mac) so that when I save my gcode in S3D, it is automatically transferred to OctoPrint and loaded up to be printed, although you can just drag and drop gcode files onto the browser to upload them, which is pretty easy. Left side for uploading to the filesystem, right side to upload to the SD card in the printer.

mjpeg-streamer is a bit of a hog, and not very well maintained, but turns out to be nearly the only sane method of streaming video through a browser, ever. Sadly, it just crashes on me now after I updated my OS. I spent days fiddling with gstreamer trying to cobble together something that would take the hardware-encoded h264 stream from my webcam and display it to me through the browser, to no avail.

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jimc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jimc » Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:41 am

ok so i am messin around with my new pi. downloaded the octopi.img and set the pi all up. everything went smoothly then i hit a wall when i tried to connect to the printer. it just sits there saying "connecting" forever. it wont connect to the printer at all. i have all my setting just a johnny posted on his. i assume you should just be able to plug the printer into the pi with a usb cable and it should connect right? anyone else have trouble.

jsc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jsc » Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:46 am

Make sure you have the correct serial port selected. Make sure the octopi user is in the "dialout" group, although the image should have taken care of that for you. Make sure you're connecting at the correct baud rate (115200). Check the Terminal tab and see what it's trying to do.

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jimc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jimc » Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:49 am

here is what im getting in terminal. then it just scrolls m105 non stop.
Screen Shot 2015-04-12 at 11.48.14 PM.png
Screen Shot 2015-04-12 at 11.48.14 PM.png (144.86 KiB) Viewed 14211 times

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jimc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jimc » Mon Apr 13, 2015 4:54 am

eurika!! i just rebooted the pi for the third time and rebooted the rambo and it connected.

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PcS
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by PcS » Mon Apr 13, 2015 11:25 am

In my time with octo print I have not had one single print failure !!! As far as jog speeds as was said earlier you can just change the default in the configuration file or just select the various mm buttons then jog control. I have never entered a value.

benavery
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by benavery » Mon Apr 13, 2015 7:27 pm

The transferring of the file doesn't bother me too much, as I always save gcode to the same folder and s3d/octoprint remember the right folder and are sorted by date so its about 5 buttons clicks in total. The octoprint file list thing is more complex than I really want. I would rather it only ever have a single file present (given I am always reloading new gcode, and rarely re-printing other things)

One thing I like about a separate 'app' (ie chrome) for controlling my printer - and why the file transferring doesn't really cost me any time - is I like to warm the bed/head up before I am ready to go anyhow, so normally after I finish modelling something I switch over to Octoprint and start the printer warming up, then switch back to S3d and start slicing and tweaking settings. I am normally done before the bed is up to temp, so I can transfer the file while I am waiting.

I find that since I got the printer up and going after building it, I literally never use the jog commands. I would love a few presets for extruding though - a short-ish one for flushing the nozzle after it oozed for a bit, and a 150 and 50mm options for reloading filament.

jsc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jsc » Mon Apr 13, 2015 7:54 pm

You can add your own button to the control panel to run macros. I did that once, then took it out so I don't remember how it's done, but it involves editing the config file; you'll have to dig through the documentation.

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jimc
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Re: Just setup OctoPrint. Any tips?

Post by jimc » Wed Apr 15, 2015 2:58 am

ok so my wifi dongle and other little goodies i needed for the pi showed up today. i got everything finalized and hooked up on the printer. i am doing my first print with it. i have only ever used s3d for the past 2 years so a couple things seem odd and will take some getting used to. couple questions. it seems like the temps dont update every second or two like they do in s3d. more like every 15 sec or so. this is a little annoying because you cant really see what the temp actually is. its always behind quite a bit. it almost gives a sense that something is not responding. anyone find a way to speed that up and make it more like s3d? also when i drag and drop a gcode file into octo on the upload to sd card box that pops up i get a duplicate file in the file listings. i took a screen shot. that was only one file and its showing two there. does this happen t everyone else?

Screen Shot 2015-04-14 at 9.37.33 PM.png
Screen Shot 2015-04-14 at 9.37.33 PM.png (61.55 KiB) Viewed 14140 times

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