OctoPrint Reinstall

From the OctoPrint web site, I downloaded a new version of OctoPi 0.17.0 image. Used gparted to wipe out all the partitions on an SD card. Next came flashing the OctoPi image to the SD card using Etcher.

Modified the octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt on the boot drive with my network credentials and modified the country info

After placing the SD card back in the Pi, I powered the device up and waited 5 minutes. I found the IP address of the Pi then opened a terminal window and started an SSH session to the Pi. 

From the command line on the Pi, I ran the command 'sudo raspi-config'. I changed the Password, changed the Timezone, and updated to the latest version. For good measure, I rebooted the Pi.

Once OctoPi was up and running, I opened the URL to the local version of OctoPi, I went through the standard setup screens. After another few minutes, I was prompted to updated OctoPrint to 1.4.2.

Once the OctoPrint finished updating to the latest version and rebooted. It was time to get some plugins.

Plugins

• Bed Visualizer
• Ran multiple times and made small adjustments between each run. 
• EEPROM Marlin Editor
• Navbar Temp
• Octolapse 
• Starting off with this disabled. I will need to come back later to config and enable. 
• Octoslack 
• Themeify
•  Applied the settings from Teaching Tech
• Added a new style. Selector '.navbar-text', CSS-Rule 'color' Value '#667cea'
•  
  

In Cura, set up a connection to OctoPrint. The set up is found in Preferences -> Printers -> Select the printer -> Connect OctoPrint button.

 

Upgrade to Cura 4.7.1 and Upgrade of OctoPrint to Python3

Cura

Today, I made the jump from Cura 4.62 to Cura 4.7.1. In reviewing the release notes, for Cura 4.7.0 there were a lot of updates. I should have updated to Cura 4.7.0 earlier. 

There are some items in Cura 4.7.0 that I am looking forward to playing with or will make using the tool a little easier. 

• Rotation widgets
• Moved tree-support from experimental to normal settings
• Adjust initial layer horizontal expansion
• Allow a g-code to be inserted before or after pausing

Cura 4.7.1 contains a small list of bug fixes. 

 

OctoPrint

When I fired up OctoPrint today, I was greeted with the notice 'Upgrade your OctoPrint install to Python3!' After reading the blog post, I couldn't see a reason not to update. I open a SSH session to my Rasberry PI running OctoPrint and ran the commands from the article. It took a bit of time for everything to download and install.

There are some messages from the updated that will need to be researched or addressed at a later day. 

• Plugin Bed Level Visualizer successfully installed
• Warning: You have installed Bed Level visualiser. There is a known issue with it failing silently on Python 3
• See more here: https://github.com/jneilliii/OctoPrint-BedLevelVisualizer/issues/213
• These plugins were not found on the repo
• Please install them manually, from OctoPrint's plugin manager
• - HeaterTimeout
• Cleaning up...
• Finished! OctoPrint should be ready to go
• Once you have verified the install works, you can safely remove the folder /home/pi/oprint.bak
• If you want to go back (If it doesn't work) to Python 2 download the file at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cp2004/Octoprint-Upgrade-To-Py3/master/go_back.py

After rebooting the Raspberry Pi, I am now getting a message that 'The OctoPrint server is currently not running'. When I SSH to the Raspberry Pi, the message 'OctoPrint version : unknown' and 'OctoPi version : 0.17.0' is now displaying.

After a bit of thought, I am just going to rebuild the OctoPrint installation.

Setting up Octoprint

When I was running my old 3D printer, I found using OctoPrint to be helpful. I think it would be good to set up a new instance of OctoPrint.

Steps

• From the OctoPrint web site, I download OctoPi 0.17.0. 
• Using Etcher, burned the image to a 16GB SD card. 
• Updated the file octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt with my network credentials. 
• ssh to the pi
• ran raspi-config
• changed the user password
• change timezone
• rebooted the pi
• Using a browser, I navigated to the IP of the OctoPi and followed the prompts to set up the first user

At this point, I paused to explore the interface. While I was exploring, OctoPrint went ahead with checking for updates. Updates were discovered and I went ahead with installing them.

Plugins

• Bed Visualizer
• Displays 3D mesh of bed topography report
• Settings
• General
• GCODE Commands for Mesh Update Process
• G28
• G29 T
• EEPROM Marlin Editor
• Floating Navbar
• Heater Timeout
• Settings
• Enable
• Navbar Temperature
• Display temperatures on navbar
• Octolaspe
• Creates a stabilized timelapse
• Octoslack
• monitoring your printer and prints via Slack, Mattermost, Pushbullet, Pushover, Rocket.Chat, Discord, Riot/Matrix, or Microsoft Teams
• Simple Emergency Stop
• Themeify
• Themes for octorpint
• Settings
• Enable theme
• enable customization
• Custom Style

• Selector	CSS-Rule	Color Picker	Value
  .span8	width		70%
  .container	width		100%
  .span4	width		25%
  .row	margin-left		0

  custom style info comes from a YouTube video channel 'Teaching Tech' entitled 'The best Ocotprint Plugins to enhance your 3D printing experience'

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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