Remotely controlling your 3d printer. How do you do it?

[Patriot]

Currently using Astroprint though looking into the best way to safely use octoprint remotely as well... astroprint is a stripped down version of octoprint aimed at user friendliness and not power users.

While I appreciate the snapshot features of astroprint... they stripped out mjpg_streamer and that prevents a number of things. Livestream from your webcam, and all the controls of the webcam. while I could do without pan, tilt and zoom I simply cannot stand out of focus.

Here is a 9hr time lapse astroprint. Jawa modeled by my gifted friend.

 

[Patriot]

I love Octoprint. I use it on an Rpi2 with the Pi camera module.

For remote access, I use OpenVPN to connect to a server I have at home. Then it works just the same as it does on Wifi, though slower.

I bet I can set that up to connect to my buntu htpc... and then across the network to the pi.

 

[IceDragon]

I'm really digging what I've read on the Octoprint software. Is there any good step by steps for a greenhorn like myself on the Linux/Pi side of things. I'm not new to that world, but I've slept a few times since I kind of fumbled my way around it. If not, no worries... I'll fumble around some more. lol

 

[ttabbal]

One of the cool things about Octoprint, is the support. For the Pi, there are pre-made images you write to an SD card. Pop it in the pi, boot, and you're running. I haven't ever used a CLI on that Pi, just never needed to. Just the web interface. Put a few settings in the web UI for the printer dimensions etc. Other than that, I drag and drop GCODE files to it, click print, monitor with the camera and the temp graphs.

 

[Patriot]

Octoprint supports this as well... and man this is nice.
I just need to figure out how to keep the bed temp up till I remove it.

 

[ttabbal]

You can add some gcode to the end script in your slicer. I use something like this.

M140 S50 ; turn bed temp to ABS removal temp***
M84 ; steppers off
G4 S3600 ; Hold bed temp for one hour S<time in seconds>***
M140 S0 ;Shut off heated bed
G90 ; absolute positioning

Adjust the temperature and time as desired.

 

[Patriot]

@ttabbal you rock!

 

[Jerry Renwick]

that's fantastic!

 

[pc-tecky]

@IceDragon .. I'm sure there are plenty of good resources out there. I like the tutorials at Adafruit.com (very complete to get up and running fast) and they also have community forums if trouble arises, heavily geared towards tinkering/hacking their products (many of their tutorials and examples are Apple/Mac based, but in fairness also cover differences with Windows, and occasionally Linux as well.) Overview | OctoPrint on M3D | Adafruit Learning System