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Web enabled Robo3d using Raspberry Pi and Octoprint

Discussion in 'Mods and Upgrades' started by sjreggel, Feb 19, 2014.

  1. sjreggel

    sjreggel New Member

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    I hooked up my robo3d Taurino board to an raspberry pi, and are running octoprint , more specific i am running a build especially made for the raspberry pi called octopi .
    Now i have an web enabled printer that executes my gcode without bothering my computer and with an attach webcam it also makes a nice timelaps video's of ever print!
    For me this is the way to go, i can monitor my printer (via the webcam and code visualiser) from every device.
    I use repetier to slice, then save the code and upload it to the pi.
    I have gotten several PM requests for me to explain what i am using and how i set it up, so i think it's better to put it in the forum.
    About Octoprint, the website states:
    Make your printer wireless
    Connect you printer to a small embedded and WiFi enabled device such as the popular Raspberry Pi, install OctoPrint on it and you have an instant wireless printer.
    Control your printer
    Start, pause and stop print jobs, remotely move the print head along all axes, extrude, retract or just define your own custom controls.
    Monitor your prints
    Get constant feedback regarding the current progress of your print job, your printer's extrusion and bed temperature. Watch your print live via the embedded webcam feed or create a timelapse movie.
    Free as in beer and speech
    OctoPrint is free and open source software released under the Affero General Public License (AGPL).
    Visualize your gcode
    OctoPrint incorporates the awesome gCodeVisualizer by Alexey Ustyantsev which allows you to visualize your gcode files before and even during printjobs.

    About Octopi:
    A Raspberry Pi distribution for 3d printers. It includes the Octoprint , 3d printer out of the box, and mjpg-streamer with rapicam support for live viewing of prints and stop motion video creation.
    More information on http://guysoft.wordpress.com/2013/08/04/octopi/And the source files are on https://github.com/guysoft/OctoPi

    What do you need:
    - Your printer, with your arduino / Taurino board (for noobs, this is the bourd inside the printer where you plugin the USB plug).
    - A slicing program (like repetier combined with slic3r) to generate gcode
    in addition to this you need
    - A Raspberry Pi
    - A USB power supply for your raspberry pi
    - A USB A-B cable (which is the current connection between PC and Robo3d)
    - A network connection, I use a wired Ethernet connection, but you could use a wifi dongle.
    - A webcam (Optional)

    Follow the install instructions on the Octopi git site to prepare your SD card for the octopi.

    Put the SD-card in the Pi and connect it to the printer and network.

    sjreggel_octopi.jpg

    Into the pi i have four cables plugged in, at the right side there is the micro usb port, which is the power input of the pi and is connected via an adapter o the mains.
    I have plugged in two USB cables on the left side of the pi, the first is directly connected to the robo3d (Taurino board), the other cable is the usb plug of my webcam.
    Furthermore my Ethernet cable is plugged into the pi.
    When you boot your system you should be able to access the octopi software in your web-browser via http://octopi.local but i am only able to do this via my mac / ubuntu machines, with my window machines i type the local ip address of the pi (in my case 192.168.1.123) where i get access to the octopi interface.

    You have to configure your Serial connection to the printer, Go to settings on the top of the website and select your Serial port and enter 250000 as baudrate.
    sjreggel  OctoPrint - settings.png

    now you can exit the settings and connect to your printer, to the left of the page there is a connect / disconnect button, when you are connected you see the machine state changing and the temperature will be updated in the temperature sheet, you can set your bed and extruder temps here to pre-heat before a job if you want (note that you have to switch the printer on, as the taurino is powered over usb and everything seems to be working, except the temp is not rising and nothing is moving ;)) .
    sjreggel  OctoPrint - 1.png



    When you go to the control sheet, you will be able to home the printer (y,x) and Z are separate.
    When te temp is ok you can do some manual extrusion and disable motors and fan.
    When your (optional) webcam is also connected and functional, you also get a live stream of the camera in here.

    sjreggel  OctoPrint -2 .png

    Now I slice my model in repetier host as i did before, when my code appears in the g-code editor tab, i press the save icon, to save the code.
    But You can also drag and drop the gcode file the the web-interface.

    Now back in octopi i push the blue upload button to the left, and select the just saved g-code to upload. When uploaded it appears in the list just above the upload button, in here you can load, or load and print the gcode. When you did load the code, you can go to the g-code viewer tab, and when the indicator bar is at 100% you can preview the code visually, you can use the vertical slider to browse between the layers and the horizontal for the layer movement . When printing this page displays the current actions, It also gives a very nice colored view of printing speed of the separate parts inside the layer.
    sjreggel  OctoPrint - 3 .png

    The terminal sheet displays the actual communication / gcode between the pi and the printer
    sjreggel  OctoPrint - 4 .png

    In the Timelapse sheet you can set the setting for the timelapse , when it take as snapshot (can be timed or on layer change) and when the print is done you can download the limelapse from here, it is called the same name as you gcode job.
    sjreggel  OctoPrint - 5 .png

    So when i do a new print this is how i start:
    - I switch on my printer
    - go to octoprint
    - connect octoprint with my robo3d
    - set the temp for bed and extruder in the interface to pre-heat
    - go to repetier to slice my model
    - save the gcode in repetier
    - upload the gcode in octoprint
    - load the gcode in octoprint
    - home my machine via octoprint
    - test extrusion via octoprint
    - hit the print button in octoprint.

    Then i go and do something else, when i am on the couch i take my laptop or table and might have a peek on the print, seeing how long it still takes, but also the live stream is very useful to see if the print came loose or something else.

    I hope this helps you started with a similar setup, I really love it this way!
    I am welcome to answer some question or get suggestions in this tread

    Sjreggel
     
  2. gumpygrits

    gumpygrits New Member

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    Awesome post! I'm just starting to put together the same setup.

    How/where are you attaching your webcam? I'm thinking about designing a clip that attaches the webcam to the print bed. I figure that should give a constant perspective for monitoring my prints.


    There is a trick to getting this to work on Windows - just download Bonjour print service from Apple. It does the same MDNS host resolution that comes native on Mac/Linux.
     
  3. sjreggel

    sjreggel New Member

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    I would love to see a good webcam attachment to the print bed, so if you found a good solution please share it.

    Ill try the bounjour service, tnx for the hint
     
  4. Mike Kelly

    Mike Kelly Volunteer

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    I made a model but it's not the most basic thing in the world. I think it looks nice though.

    It uses the internals of this camera:
    http://www.amazon.com/SANOXY®-Webca...ie=UTF8&qid=1393178026&sr=8-5&keywords=webcam
    or
    http://www.amazon.com/Fosmon-Webcam...e=UTF8&qid=1393178034&sr=8-26&keywords=webcam
    or
    http://www.amazon.com/Fosmon-Webcam...e=UTF8&qid=1393178034&sr=8-31&keywords=webcam

    Let me know if you want the model. I also found someone else who made a bed mounted webcam for their mendel that uses their board. Their design was much more bare-bones showing the exposed PCB.
     
  5. JohnStack

    JohnStack New Member

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  6. SoLongSidekick

    SoLongSidekick Active Member

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    I was thinking about setting this up but was worried about something; storage space. I record just about every print I do with a 720p webcam for the purpose of creating time lapse videos, and a print that is around 4 hours ends up being about 60GB before editing. I don't believe this setup is capable of recording anything over 3 hours is it? I guess you could save the files to a web server instead of the Pi's SD Card? Sorry if this is mentioned, I skimmed the post looking for it but couldn't.

    EDIT - I have my webcam attached to my bed. I realized very early on it is really the only way to make time lapse videos because with a bed that moves (as the R1's bed does) it continually pulls in and out of focus during the build. I have this webcam and I just used electrical tape to attach it to the edge of my bed. I have realized that I need to create a mount that offsets the camera a few inches for anything other than really small prints but there are plenty of solutions already on Thingiverse that should work.
     
  7. da9l

    da9l Member

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    I'm using the raspberry pi camera board with great success!
     
  8. sjreggel

    sjreggel New Member

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    Octopi makes this timelaps for you, it even doesn't save the actual stream. You can set it for example to one snapshot every 10 seccond, meaning 6 frames per minute, which doesn't take that much room on the sd card.
    A 2.5 hour job (the thingeverse elephant) on 720p takes about 10 MB on the sd card.
     
  9. da9l

    da9l Member

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    Hi guys!

    Another question on this topic. In repetier host there is an emergency stop button. Unfortunately I've had to use that one quite often (thrown nuts, models that are detached etc) The last time it happened I realized I was unable to emergency stop the printer from octoprint. There is a disable motors button but no emergency stop.

    I know that one can create custom command buttons in octoprint but what is the command that should be sent to the robo3d in order to emergency stop it?

    I'd guess I could look at what repetier sends but now my laptop is disconnected from the printer... #lazyweb...

    Regards, Daniel
     
  10. Montravont

    Montravont Active Member

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    @Mike: I'd be interested in that model for the webcam mount.
     
  11. lemuba

    lemuba Active Member

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    Moin Moin :)

    I just set up my OctoPi - and purchased a supported Logitech C 270 WEB Cam today - this investment was wasted money;-)
    The lens angle of the Logitech Cam is far away from a fish eye angle and makes it necessary to install the cam resonable far away from the Robo to get everything into the picture frame. So I tried my Mobius Action Cam which I use also on my Black Widow Quadrocopter in addition to a GoPro.
    The Mobius worked out of the box, but see yourself:

    How I mounted the Cam temporarily for testing:

    [​IMG]

    And this is the screen shot/angle from Octopi:

    [​IMG]

    With the stock lens f2.8 installed, the image is sharp in approximate 10cm/4inch distance, but could be adjusted to closer distance.
    The Mobius should be connected via a powered USB hub as it draws a higher current espcially with an empty and to be charged Lipo Battery.
    The WEB Cam modus of the Mobius cam is automatically enabled if:
    1. Micro SD Card "removed"
    2. And then the powered USB plug connected

    You will find also many printable stuff for the Mobius Action Cam...:

    http://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=Mobius&sa=

    Mobius Support Threat here - Click

    Best regards,

    Matthias
     
    #11 lemuba, Aug 7, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 7, 2014
    7 people like this.
  12. JohnStack

    JohnStack New Member

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    Really cool. The fish eye thing was vexing. I just hung back when I was testing cameras last year with my Octoprint. Sounds like this is a great solution.
     
  13. lemuba

    lemuba Active Member

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    Hi John,

    what I forgot to mention - also the video playback is very smooth and nice - at my site an IMAC from 2010 and the Firefox Browser.
    The Mobius Cam is a great Action Cam at a very competitive price - also very popular in the R/C plane and Multi Copter community.
    For Video/Movie recording I would say: 80-90% of the GoPro 3 Quality at 1/6 of the GoPro Price...

    And it´s supporting my underpowered ABS ROBO as getting due to it´s h264 video encoder resonable warm:)

    Br,

    Matthias
     
  14. lemuba

    lemuba Active Member

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    As not possible any more to edit my original post - attached now one Mobius Timelaps video.
    Will discover now if I can tell Octopi/mjepg plugin to generate the timelaps movie in Full HD, 1080P.
    Later also define another/better position for Mobius Cam itself.

    Br,
    Matthias

     
    3 people like this.
  15. John Butler

    John Butler New Member

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    Hey, I absolutely love this thread! I followed your lead and setup Octopi and am printing like a champ. Very nice to monitor the prints from anywhere with the webcam feature running. Thanks for the details!
     
  16. Ben Lindstrom

    Ben Lindstrom Active Member

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    I'm pretty much going down this path as well. Just has been slow because I've been working integrating a Tontec 2.8" touch screen display with the rPi. Which has been a bit painful due to all the bad information related to the chips they are using.

    Also, cleaning up and reworking my office to allow me to put the printer in there hasn't helped much either. =)
     
  17. lemuba

    lemuba Active Member

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    Ben,

    Octoprints rocks - I´m sending now all my Simplify3D sliced print jobs to Octoprint and let Octoprint perform the job over night - yet no crash and I printed a lot!, nothing - it just works perfect and my IMAC is released for other jobs or may sleep:)
    Next step is to possible add 2 custom commands/buttons: 1. Overwrite/Adjust the print speed and 2. Overwrite/adjust the Extruder Multiplier.

    Just go for it!

    Matthias
     
    2 people like this.
  18. Billm

    Billm Member

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    how do you load your stl files to the octopi?
     
  19. Ben Lindstrom

    Ben Lindstrom Active Member

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    Only flaw with it is if you tell it to heat the print head or print bed. It will refuse to process any other commands until that is 100% completed. It wasn't uncommon for me to start the heat up process then dork around verifying levelness and such (as I have a kickstarter version).

    Sadly, it looks like my printer is down for a while now. =( The hot-end didn't get fully cleaned out when I put it away a month or so ago, and now it is jammed solid. I was intending on upgrade to aE3D anyways. *Sigh*

    You can drop and drag your STL to the screen and if you have Cura installed and configured with octopi it will slice it. However the Raspberry Pi is woefully underpowered as a slicer platform (15 minutes for my bear model vs 3 seconds). So I just use Repeiter w/ Slic3r (as I'm most comfortable with it) on my Mac to build the gcode, save it, and drop and drag it into the window and have it save to the local disk. Then it is ready to be used.
     
  20. lemuba

    lemuba Active Member

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    So guys,

    I have modified Octoprint to be able to change the print speed and extruder speed while printing - this works great!
    Further I have setup the Raspberry PI to act as network drive - this enables me now to save the Simplify3D gcode files directly to the right Octoprint Folder which is for me "uploads" in the main home directory - pictures attached below. Further I had to reduce the Baudrate in the Marlin Firmware to "115200" to elimate communication errors - long time jobs - 24 hrs, etc. run now fully stable.
    The quality I print with PLA via the E3D V6 Hotend at approximate 50mm/sec is also great from 0.1mm-0.3mm layer hight.
    The Robo and I had some start up issues - but now we are best friends:)
    Next task is to add some LED lightning for my Mobius action cam connected to the Raspberry PI/Octoprint.

    Br,

    Matthias

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Currently I print this big thing to find the right space for my Raspberry PI Wlan Thermometer with PIT Controller, 50W Powersupply, etc., which controls e.g. my Weber Kettle Barbeque via a R/C Servo for low and slow jobs (e.g. Pulled Pork and Beef Brisket;-)
    http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:55062

    [​IMG]

    Edit:

    Now after 24 hrs. still printing:

    [​IMG]
     
    #20 lemuba, Sep 23, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 24, 2014
    2 people like this.

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