Using a Raspberry Pi + Octopi to manage your printer

[sniffle]

i just recently figured it out myself... glad i can help

[Drone]

Thanks again sniffle. I edited the haproxy.cfg and setup the port I wanted to use, setup the forwarding in my router and it's working exactly as intended.

It's hard to believe a $35 Raspberri Pi is doing the same job I had a $2500 computer doing, and it's doing it well. I've got a camera setup and gave my dyndns info to a few friends and they are just blown away. I'm playing with the optimal timelapse settings now and seeing what I can do with that. It's not really all that useful, but definitely cool for a geek.


The only thing I would like changed at this point is adding a password to allow just viewing. I would much rather that the system doesn't allow just anybody to view without any access control, but I haven't seen a way to do this yet. I see there is access control for admin and active users, but I don't see a way to add requiring a password just for viewing. If anyone knows of a way to set this up it would be appreciated.

[sniffle]

do you really need a password for that? nothing can be clicked on or used so there is no real point. you can setup a webpage that you can password that only shows tge raw stream... but i'm not sure how to go about it.

[Drone]

do you really need a password for that? nothing can be clicked on or used so there is no real point. you can setup a webpage that you can password that only shows tge raw stream... but i'm not sure how to go about it.

Yeah, I really would like a password for viewing. The main reason is that I don't want unfettered access to real-time build streaming of proprietary new designs I'm working on. But I still want to be able to remotely view the print in progress for myself (and anyone I trust to view the live stream). Not a really big deal I guess, but would be a nice feature.

The controlled access website is a good idea and maybe when I get some time I'll look into that.

The easy workaround is to change the streaming port address and forwarding so it doesn't work for the people that accessed it earlier and just change the port back if I want to grant them access. Not nearly as elegant as a simple password access to viewing though. But it's effective. I also have to be careful to remove timelapse videos before I give access since that is unrestricted for guest downloads also.

But the above being said, Octoprint has far exceeded my expectations and I can't imagine not having it now.

[PyramidDave]

I have been playing with this for a couple of weeks now & noticed the Wi-Pi Raspberry Pi 802.11n Wireless Adapter I bought transmits the video very choppy relative to a wired connection. I should have looked into this a little more before getting that adapter. I just realized that is only running at 150Mbps. My pi is only a couple of feet from the router, but it is nice to have 1 less wire attached.

I found a Panda 300Mbps Wireless-N USB Adapter w/ WPS button for $17 on Amazon that I think might buy. Here is the link to it on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...A1K5RDMQ6V4659
Anyone have any experience with this adapter? The WPS button should make it easier to setup on a wireless network if your router supports this.

I am also going to go back to using Pronterface until there is a way to keep a log of print files automatically. I put a message on the octoprint discussion board about how this can be done. Apparently it is not possible yet, but sounds like someone there might make a plugin to do this. I have programmed in a few languages, but not python. Maybe I will look into seeing if I can do something with this also.

[SgtToe]

https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/...-from-your-RPi

So while I wait for my printer to arrive I figured I would get the RPi and the relay working. And had some questions after reading this and watching some youtube videos.

Concerning hooking the pi to the relay he says:

• connect JD-VDD to one of the 5V pins on the Pi
• connect VDD to 3.3V (these two power the relays)

The 6-pin-header is to be connected as follows:

• connect GND to Ground (surprise ;D)
• connect VCC to the other 5V pin
• connect IN1-IN4 to the remaining pins

Question Are:
1. He refers to plugging some 6 port header into the remaining pins, really we just need VCC to 5v, Ground to ground, and one GPIO pin going to one of the 4 relays right? No clue what 6 pin header he is talking about. I think he is using just pin 18

2. Why pull the jumper and power those other two pins separately?

[clough42]

So while I wait for my printer to arrive I figured I would get the RPi and the relay working. And had some questions after reading this and watching some youtube videos.

Concerning hooking the pi to the relay he says:

• connect JD-VDD to one of the 5V pins on the Pi
• connect VDD to 3.3V (these two power the relays)

The 6-pin-header is to be connected as follows:

• connect GND to Ground (surprise ;D)
• connect VCC to the other 5V pin
• connect IN1-IN4 to the remaining pins

Question Are:
1. He refers to plugging some 6 port header into the remaining pins, really we just need VCC to 5v, Ground to ground, and one GPIO pin going to one of the 4 relays right? No clue what 6 pin header he is talking about. I think he is using just pin 18

2. Why pull the jumper and power those other two pins separately?

He's talking about the 6-pin header on the relay board. The 4-channel boards have a header with power, gnd and four signal lines.

The rest of the instructions are about supplying 5V to the JD-VCC line, which powers the relay coils and 3.3V to the VCC line, which powers the LED side of the optoisolators, which are connected to the GPIO pins. Technically, this is correct, because the RPi GPIO pins are 3.3V logic. It's also probably not necessary, since there are two diode drops in the circuit. I have been running 5V SainSmart relay boards off the GPIO pins of a Model B for months without any apparent issues.

[SgtToe]

He's talking about the 6-pin header on the relay board. The 4-channel boards have a header with power, gnd and four signal lines.

The rest of the instructions are about supplying 5V to the JD-VCC line, which powers the relay coils and 3.3V to the VCC line, which powers the LED side of the optoisolators, which are connected to the GPIO pins. Technically, this is correct, because the RPi GPIO pins are 3.3V logic. It's also probably not necessary, since there are two diode drops in the circuit. I have been running 5V SainSmart relay boards off the GPIO pins of a Model B for months without any apparent issues.

Ok, thanks for the answer clough42.

[clough42]

Thanks again sniffle. I edited the haproxy.cfg and setup the port I wanted to use, setup the forwarding in my router and it's working exactly as intended.

It's hard to believe a $35 Raspberri Pi is doing the same job I had a $2500 computer doing, and it's doing it well. I've got a camera setup and gave my dyndns info to a few friends and they are just blown away. I'm playing with the optimal timelapse settings now and seeing what I can do with that. It's not really all that useful, but definitely cool for a geek.


The only thing I would like changed at this point is adding a password to allow just viewing. I would much rather that the system doesn't allow just anybody to view without any access control, but I haven't seen a way to do this yet. I see there is access control for admin and active users, but I don't see a way to add requiring a password just for viewing. If anyone knows of a way to set this up it would be appreciated.

I solved the remote monitoring with a VPN. All of my printers have Octopi setups on my local, private network, and then I have OpenVPN set up at the gateway. That way, I can connect in with a laptop, tablet or even my cell phone to monitor and control prints when I'm away from home. Everything is encrypted and I'm not exposing OctoPrint to the outside world.

I'm using Untangle NG-Firewall as my gateway/router, so the OpenVpn setup was easy.

[SgtToe]

Need some help, I have my pi setup and octoprint installed, my printer is on order so obviously I don't have a printer hooked to the pi. When I don't have the camera plugged in it complains every 2 min about no camera. Now that I have the camera hooked up it no longer complains, but when I go to the page I see the graph of the temp and the other tabs, but I don't see any picture, what tab should it be on? Does a printer need to be hooked up for the camera to work? I have the Xbox web cam and it says it is supported as is out of the box.


2nd question, I read that octopi.local should work on a windows pic if I install bonjour, it does not work from my iPad either, any idea why? It does work if I use the ip.


**
edit I just checked with safari from my iPad and everything works! so octopi?local and video both ok via safari but not with chrome