Updating Node on my Linux box

Recently, I read that Node 7 has been released. I am thinking that it is time to update my Linux box to the newer version.

There are multiple ways to update a Linux box.

One way is to use the package manager that shipped with Ubuntu. This method is good for a system that doesn't already have node installed and for a person who wants to spend minimal effort on keeping Node up to date.

The command to install Node 6 would be

 curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash -  
 sudo apt-get install -y nodejs  

The command for Node 7 would be

 curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_7.x | sudo -E bash -  
 sudo apt-get install -y nodejs  

If Node is already installed then the latest release can be installed with

 sudo n latest  

The stable version can be installed with

 sudo n stable  

I am going to give nvm a try for installing the latest version of Node.

I will start by installing nvm with the command

 curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.33.0/install.sh | bash  

Then use the following command find the latest version of Node

 nvm ls-remote  

Once I determined which version I wanted to install, I ran the command

 nvm install v7.4.0  

Setting up OctoPrint

I am setting up OctoPrint to give me more flexibility in monitoring and to free up a computer from being connected to the 3D Printer.

High Level Steps

1. Get the OctoPi image
2. Burn the image to an SD card. I am using Linux (Ubuntu) to burn the image.
3. Configure the Raspberry Pi
4. Test
5. Move the equipment to the same location as the printer.

Detailed Steps

1. Download the latest version of OctoPi
2. Plug in your favorite Memory Card Reader
3. Plug in your SD Card into the Memory Card Reader
4. Open the Disks app
5. Find your SD Card. The device is '/dev/sdd1' on my machine. Save the device info for a later step.
6. In a terminal issue the following command: sudo dd if={location of image} od={destination} bs=4M
• More Info: Installing operating system images on Linux
7. I entered: sudo dd if=~/Downloads/2016-03-18-octopi-jessie-lite-0.13.0.img of=/dev/sdd bs=4M  
• Warnings and notes about dd command
• You need to run the command as superuser or use sudo
• The dd command does not display any feedback while it is running. You need to wait for the command prompt to return
• If the write fails try using 1M for the bs parameter.
• The uppercase M in the bs parameter is important.
8. Eject the SD card
9. Put the SD Card into the Raspberry Pi.
10. Plug in the Network Cable
11. Apply power
12. Wait for the Raspberry Pi to boot.
13. In the terminal ssh to the Pi using the command:  ssh pi@octopi.local
14. You will be prompted that the authenticity of the host can't be established and will need to accept the fingerprint. The default user for OctoPrint is 'pi' and the default password is 'raspberry'.
15. Change the password of the pi to something that is secure and you can remember. Changing the password is done using the command:  passwd  
16. Configure the Raspberry PI by issuing the command:  sudo raspi-config
17. You will want to expand the filesystem, exit and reboot the Raspberry Pi.
18. Once the Pi has finished rebooting, you can use the URL http://octopi.local. This may take a minute or two for page to display.
19. You will be prompted to enter user name and password.
20. Once the site appears, log in with the user name and password from the previous step.
21. If prompted to update OctoPrint, perform the update. This will take a few minutes. When the update is complete you will be asked to reload the user interface. The update and reload took about 10 minutes for me.
22. You will be prompted to set up a slicing profile. If you are already a Cura user you can import the profile. I updated my current Cura profile.

You should now have a basic setup for OctoPrint.

Plug your 3D Printer's USB cable into the printer and the Raspberry Pi then test if you can connect. In my case, I couldn't connect using 'Auto' for the Serial Port and Buadrate. I was able to connect once I manually set the values.

Testing that the Web Cam works by going to Settings -> Webcam & Timelapse. I clicked the test button, a dialog box pops up. I don't see the stream. To fix the issue, I used ssh to connect to the Pi, issued 'sudo nano /boot/octopi.txt', changed the camera usb options line to read 'camera_usb_options="-r VGA", saved the file, and rebooted the Pi.

Update 25 March 2017

I got some hardware to add to my OctoPi build out. The first item is 2.8 TFT with Touchscreen from adafruit. I followed the instructions for the Easy Install.

Note: in the scripts folder on the Raspberry Pi that is script named 'enable-adafruit-pitft' that did not work for me. It appears that script tries to install older libraries for the display.

It took some work to get OctoPiPanel running. My first attempt was to use the script included with OctoPi. This did not work for me. I was getting an error about pygame not being installed. What did work was using the instructions from the OctoPiPanel github page.

The second piece of hardware is a Raspberry Pi Camera Module Board. To get the module to work, I modified the file '/boot/octopi.txt', I just removed the # from the line camera_raspi_options="-fps 10"

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