[HN Gopher] OctoPrint: Snappy web interface for your 3D printer
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OctoPrint: Snappy web interface for your 3D printer
Author : pabs3
Score : 237 points
Date : 2022-08-14 01:17 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (octoprint.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (octoprint.org)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _OctoPrint_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26415856 -
| March 2021 (108 comments)
| nsbk wrote:
| I love octoprint, it makes the whole printing experience so much
| nicer. The integration with Home Assistant is great and allows
| for automations like turning the printer off after finishing a
| job.
|
| On the other hand, I don't think "snappy" is the adjective that
| best describes octoprint
| pabs3 wrote:
| If you use this, please consider donating. From the site:
|
| > I work full time on OctoPrint and can only continue thanks to
| funding by people like you. Give the button a click and learn how
| you can help!
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Yes! One of the Patreon campaigns I have been giving to for a
| long time. I love octoprint!
| [deleted]
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| I've been using octoprint for years now. It's fantastic.
| Invaluable on a machine with no sd card support for standalone
| printing.
| gtsnexp wrote:
| Any thoughts on Formlabs compatibility?
| Damogran6 wrote:
| I've kept the patreon subscription LONG after my workflow moved
| away from using it. I used it for 4-5 years with my completely
| homebrewed printers and it was fantastic for it...and
| reasonable...and stayed reasonable...and was a lot like I
| remember FOSS being, so I make sure Gina keeps getting funded.
| sakerbos wrote:
| Damn and I've just sold my printer! This looks great, we'll done!
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I love Octoprint. The only downside I've run into is that
| suddenly I've lost all of the smarts the printer had. It didn't
| seem like that was much of a downside, but for instance the Prusa
| MK3s could recover from a power loss automatically and resume
| right where it left off, but once Octoprint was added, that was
| gone.
|
| But on the other hand, suddenly I've got remote access,
| permissions, cameras, all sorts of plugins for timelapses and bed
| level monitoring and all sorts of things. It's generally a great
| trade-off.
|
| I do wish it had better support for mobile devices. It's weirdly
| hard to get a Raspberry Pi at the moment, but a bunch of folks
| have an Android or iPhone a few generations back with a cracked
| screen or whatever that would do a great job. There are some
| options, like Octo4a, but they've got some rough edges.
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| I use this for my Creality Ender V3 and it's honestly amazing.
| Have it running on a raspberry pi.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| OctoPrint is what inspired me to create https://printnanny.ai/ -
| I originally released PrintNanny as an OctoPrint plugin over
| holiday break!
|
| I ended up rolling my own Linux distribution (PrintNanny OS) to
| roll out over-the-air updates and share files/jobs/profiles
| across a mixed fleet of printer controller softwares (Moonraker
| API/Mainsail UI, Repetier, OctoPrint).
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| This and Obico/Spaghetti Detective are really neat. I've been
| wondering about a version that was aware of the intended model
| being produced and could detect failures by considering the
| exact 3D shape. It feels like it _should_ be better at
| detecting something going wrong, but frankly the two cases you
| 've got covered, spaghetti and shift, covers like...almost
| everything.
|
| It looks like this runs entirely on a Raspberry Pi 4? That's
| pretty neat. As far as I know, Obico needs a significantly
| meatier computer.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Thank you! Your instincts are totally right. I've tried a few
| experiments using 3D model source as a model input, and...
|
| The good: It's possible to apply a segmentation model and
| "mask" expected real-world shape based on a mask extracted
| from the 3D source files.
|
| The bad: 3D segmentation proposals are expensive to
| calculate/reduce (imagine rendering a point cloud). The 2D
| masking experiments I ran were low signal / high noise
| compared to 2D bounding boxes.
|
| The ugly: Your camera, printer, and slicer object rotation
| must all be _very_ carefully calibrated and anchored.
|
| I have ideas about how to use stereoscopic cameras to run an
| automatic calibration routine, but haven't had time to roll
| out experiments. If you're curious, I gave a talk about
| PrintNanny's print quality model [1].
|
| Also yep, I run a TensorFlow Lite model and post-processing
| directly on the Pi. I'm actually working on a blog post about
| this now! [2]
|
| Besides TensorFlow Lite, the key pieces of technology in the
| computer vision stack are gstreamer [3], gstreamer's Rust
| bindings [4], and nnstreamer [5].
|
| [1] https://bit.ly/tf-everywhere-2021-print-nanny [2]
| https://twitter.com/grepLeigh/status/1553777548378587136 [3]
| https://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ [4]
| https://crates.io/crates/gstreamer [5]
| https://github.com/nnstreamer/nnstreamer
| joshvm wrote:
| On the calibration side, would it be possible to use
| fiducial markers (even a single Aruco) on the print bed to
| make an ortho projection of the print? You have the issue
| of print rotation relative to the bed, but I don't think
| there's an easy way around that if you allow removable
| beds. My gut feeling is that stereo would work but it'd be
| a pain to make reliable. ToF using something like a Kinect
| or RealSense might work at a coarse level (few mm).
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I did try inferring depth distance from strategically-
| placed round colored stickers. Using 1 fixed camera, I
| didn't see noteworthy results until I cranked up the
| resolution to 1080+ with FP64 inputs. I used a UNET
| architecture with skip connections between 1/4th, 1/8th,
| and 1/16th resolution samples. Diagrams here:
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/xLmE9Xp7UYmekBwV6
|
| Keep in mind that PrintNanny's video encoding and neural
| network pipelines are running on-device, so real-world
| results favor models that perform well when u8 quantized
| at 320p resolution. The constraints are part of the fun,
| but there is a bias towards techniques that retain signal
| when the model is compressed. Segmentation and depth
| models naturally lose fidelity in that scenario compared
| to a dead-simple CNN/SSD pumping out bounding box
| proposals.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| Have you ever considered adding microphone support as an
| additional stream of data for diagnostics? Having sat next to
| my printer for many prints, seems like there are some audio
| cues you could tune in on.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I think your intuition is spot on (and I used to listen to my
| 3D printer before PrintNanny)!
|
| Microphone input is on my experiment list, but I don't think
| I'll execute on this idea any time soon. I think the
| mechanical failure detection is "good enough" at the moment,
| so I'm now focused on stream-lining the experience of
| managing lots of printers.
|
| Workflow automation (like printing shipping labels or batch
| QR code labels) and fleet management are at the top of my
| priority list. The AI is fun and flashy, but it turns out
| people just need a CRM for 3D printing.
| hda111 wrote:
| Do you use an OTA updater that is already available (open
| source) for Yocto Project or did you write your own?
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I'm using SWUpdate. I distribute an image with a [boot,
| rootfsA, rootfsB, data] partition scheme [1], and subsequent
| updates target the non-active rootfs partition. You can even
| theme SwUpdate's CSS [2] - nifty!
|
| When I was assessing options for over-the-air updates, I
| evaluated everything between Mender.io (completely managed
| update service) to building a Coreos distro with OsTree-based
| patch system. So far Swupdate has felt like the right trade-
| off between customization and ease-of-use - plus the trail
| I've walked down feels well-traversed.
|
| [1] https://sbabic.github.io/swupdate/overview.html#double-
| copy [2]
| https://twitter.com/grepLeigh/status/1545564418502668289
| alexk307 wrote:
| This is a really cool project, well done!
| sitkack wrote:
| This is awesome! You probably saved a bunch of people's lives.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Thank you! Mostly just saving a little weekend time.
| cyphax wrote:
| I had planned to install OctoPrint on a Pi4 to leverage my
| printer as well but I would never have been able to conjure up
| something this extensive! Thank you for making it and sharing
| it!
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Thanks! OctoPrint's plugin system is what helped me ship a
| prototype quickly. The project would have ended up in the
| elephant graveyard otherwise. All of the optimizations
| (building tuned Linux kernel, rolling a distro, porting code
| to Rust) would have been daunting without OctoPrint's maker
| community cheering me on and enthusiastically testing
| PrintNanny.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| I love OctoPrint, one of my favourite open source projects.
| lightedman wrote:
| It should be noted this is for open-frame filament printers, not
| light-based resin printers.
| kube-system wrote:
| Wish there was something similar for SLA printers
| boboche wrote:
| Haven't toyed with it for a while and might not serve your
| specific use case, but I used this with my custom-made dlp
| printer : https://www.nanodlp.com/
|
| My controller was a simple stepper motor and display is a DLP
| projector.
|
| Might not support esoteric controllers and displays though.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Which parts of OctoPrint (or other printer management software)
| do you miss most when printing SLA?
|
| I have a Prusa SL1S Speed and the network file management [1]
| is good enough for my personal use, but I've always wondered if
| there's a missed opportunity here.
|
| [1] https://help.prusa3d.com/article/connecting-original-
| prusa-s...
| NBJack wrote:
| Just don't let it update itself. Or update it at all. I've had it
| break multiple times during 'upgrades'.
| dpedu wrote:
| This is a great piece of software - I've printed hundreds of
| objects using Octoprint. I've also built a few custom 3d printers
| and since Octoprint runs on common Linux on a Raspberry Pi it
| doubles as a convenient tool for writing firmware builds to the
| printer, over the network. Octoprint uses standard APIs such as
| /dev/ serial ports and any monitoring webcam supported by
| Video4Linux. A great tool!
| rabbitofdeath wrote:
| The extensibility of OctoPrint is amazing - the community that
| builds plugins (and keeps them up to date!) is nothing short of
| astounding.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| I use Octoprint, but honestly the UI is just awful. Pronterface
| seems to be the standard goto look for 3d print software, but
| honestly it's not a good look, nor is it fun to use.
| themanmaran wrote:
| OctoPrint is the gold standard for running / monitoring 3D
| prints. I tried using the Creality cloud tools that shipped with
| the CR10S, but they paled in comparison.
|
| At the end of the day, I removed the onboard chip that connected
| to the Creality cloud so I could plug in a raspberry pi with
| octoprint.
| mchristen wrote:
| If only my 3D printer was as reliable as OctoPrint :)
| johnz wrote:
| I've only ever used a 3D printer with OctoPrint. I'd be
| interested to hear from people who tried and stopped using
| OctoPrint.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I used it for seven years or so before moving to Klipper, and
| then I started using Mainsail on the same hardware for the more
| direct integration:
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/07/09/1230
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I go back and forth with it. I do use OctoPrint plugins for bed
| leveling and as a gcode terminal. But, I mostly print from the
| SD card because I have a Prusa MK3S and it has power panic
| support, so a print can be salvaged if power dies in the middle
| of a print. Additionally, I like having print stats and the
| printer only accumulates print time done over the SD card.
| Having OctoPrint work with the SD card is brutally slow.
|
| I also turn my printer off when I'm not using it and
| OctoPrint's auto-reconnect doesn't work most of the time. If
| someone isn't paying attention and tries to connect while a
| print is running, it causes the printer to reboot, which isn't
| fun. So I largely leave it disconnected. I don't have a camera
| though. If I were making videos of my prints I'm sure I'd rely
| on OctoPrint more.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Losing that power panic thing was a big deal to me! Very
| unfortunate.
|
| On the other hand, Octolapse is a lot of fun. But I went back
| to just using an SD card for important prints just because I
| value the recovery option.
| chubbnix wrote:
| My work flow changed from using one printer to using 8 of them.
| Octoprint is great but I haven't taken the time or expense to
| set so many up since each would need their own pi. They are
| hard to find these days for a reasonably price. It was great
| when I did everything off the one printer though, I used an
| aftermarket runout sensor for filament on the gpio pins of the
| pi. I also kept track of my filament usage, used the webcam for
| monitoring from my house to the garage, and arc welder plugin
| to improve some of the prints. I am still a supporter of the
| program but I now just organize my SD cards neatly and manually
| sync them all with updated files. If my operation was bigger I
| would probably organize a networked solution like octoprint
| though.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Which runout sensor were you using?
|
| If your operation expands and you want to chat about
| wrangling networked printer management software, shoot me an
| email leigh@printnanny.ai. I want to make it dead-simple to
| manage 10+ printers running a menagerie of software
| (OctoPrint, Moonraker/Mainsail) and firmwares
| (Marlin/Klipper). Happy to trade notes!
| oynqr wrote:
| Are Raspberry Pis a hard requirement to run Octoprint?
| There's plenty of other SBCs out there that are much nicer
| AND more available.
| stirfish wrote:
| I run octoprint on an Intel NUC. I found my prints to be
| faster through octoprint than when I start them via sd card
| on my Ender 3.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I run OctoPrint on a RockPi, but I also rolled my own
| embedded Linux distro (PrintNanny OS) to package this
| setup.
|
| There are a lot of small papercuts, like OctoPrint using
| `vcgencmd` to measure CPU throttling. `vcgencmd` is part of
| Raspberry Pi's userland. Not a big deal (aliased to another
| util). I've also added WebRTC-based streaming to my build.
|
| The recommended way to use OctoPrint is the OctoPi image,
| which is based on Raspbian / Raspberry Pi OS. The OctoPi
| image includes extras like haproxy and mjpg streamer for
| HTTP-based JPEG frame stream. If you end up baking a RockPi
| image, here's the OctoPi root file system for reference: ht
| tps://github.com/guysoft/OctoPi/tree/devel/src/modules/oct.
| ..
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| no, there are many replies in here where people act as such
| and its kinda a mystery to me in 2022. many other SBCs are
| arm, and many others are running debian or and can easily
| run the same software without 'tons of extra effort because
| its not a rpi'
|
| at this point the mere thought of setting up a sbc that
| isnt a raspberry pi is job security and frankly im not sure
| why. its not like the rasberry pi 1 days
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I've had up to three Octoprint instances running on a single
| Pi with no issues.
| brianwawok wrote:
| I believe it would slightly slow down my printer, as the slow
| boat OctoPrint connection is not as fast as the SD card. See
| https://forum.prusa3d.com/forum/original-prusa-i3-mk3s-mk3-u...
| manchmalscott wrote:
| Octoprint is such a huge improvement to the 3d printing
| experience, combined with some custom Marlin firmware, it drives
| status messages on the build in display, it shows detailed error
| messages on the web interface, the plugin ecosystem is incredibly
| robust, and being able to have the webcam feed on a separate
| monitor to watch for failures while I'm working are invaluable. I
| don't think I'd want to use my 3d printer without it.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Wondering what people here are using 3D printers for these days.
|
| Every time I try to find an excuse to buy one I mainly see gadget
| usages with limited real world necessity.
|
| Any cool use cases for core life necessities?
| criddell wrote:
| My kids tease me because they say all I print are things to
| hold other things. For example, I printed a bracket to attach a
| 4-port router and a USB power supply to the underside of my
| desk. I've printed tool holders and little boxes to store 3d
| printer parts in. I printed a stand to hold my laptop in
| clamshell mode.
|
| I've also printed jigs and router templates used in some minor
| woodworking projects.
|
| Not super useful, but it's pretty satisfying to have and idea,
| create it in TinkerCAD or Fusion, then see it materialize on
| the build plate.
| BozeWolf wrote:
| I see it as an extra tool in my toolkit. Sometimes it is best
| to use some wood. Sometimes it is best to design and 3d print
| something.
|
| Currently designing and printing protection for my racing bike
| shoes; those shimano cleads wear quickly when walking. I need
| to walk quite a bit before being on the street and also like to
| take a break somewhere at a restaurant. So I designed some tpu
| clead-protectors.
|
| Also use my self designed kitchen-aid tool-hangers are used a
| lot. I have made hooks to hang the espresso machine filter
| holders on. Used daily. A pin to fix something in my car. A
| button for the piezo starter on my parents kitch hob. Handles,
| USB charger case + hangers for cables... parametric-
| configurable stand for plant pots. etc etc.
|
| But you need some 3d cad skills. Downloading existing models
| and printing them does not offer that much. Im a developer who
| studied mechanical engineering :) I worked at Ultimaker as a
| developer. Worked on their digital factory, a cloud offering
| for their printers.
| frxx wrote:
| I've met Gina briefly. Absolutely fantastic person! I don't have
| a 3D-printer, but I'm always happy to see OctoPrint pop up on
| here.
| hoherd wrote:
| She was on PythonBytes recently. They talk a bit about
| Octoprint, other 3D-printing things, and of course other
| non-3D-printing things.
|
| https://pythonbytes.fm/episodes/show/289/textinator-is-comin...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I might be going offtopic... but, what is a 'best buy' (cheap,
| but good enough) 3d printer for a hobbyist, that is compatible
| with opensource/linux stuff (like octoprint,..), and has the most
| "effortless" experience (so, more printing than calibrating and
| modifying stuff)? Preferably atleast pla and abs.
| ss2003 wrote:
| If there's a Mico Center near you, I just picked up a creality
| 3 pro for $100 using a Slick Deals coupon.
| andyfilms1 wrote:
| With 3D printers, "cheap" is inversely correlated with
| "reliable." Something like an Ender 3 will fulfill your
| requirements, but will require maintenance once it's been
| "broken in."
|
| If you can find some more cash, a Prusa MK3S or the newer Bambu
| Lab X1 or AnkerMake will provide more consistent, reliable
| quality.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Ender usually has the best value (price to performance) but
| most of their printers require a little extra setup and ongoing
| maintenance. Their new "s" printers are pretty nice out of the
| box though. Prusa seems to be a pretty reliable brand too, and
| most of their models are highly recommended in the 3D printing
| circles I hang out in.
| highdeserthackr wrote:
| Been quite happy with my Anycubic Mega S. It just works. $179
| on Amazon when it goes on flash sale.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Most 3D print use standard Serial (or Serial over USB)
| interface with G-CODE. This is pretty standard. Don't have to
| worry the drivers.
| tcrenshaw wrote:
| I've been browsing Hacker News for several years now and this is
| the post that pushed me into making an account, just to comment
| here.
|
| Klipper is a better choice in almost every way. It actually uses
| the CPU of your pi to improve the print, as opposed to Octoprint
| which basically just spits the gcode straight over to the
| microcontroller.
|
| Upgrading to Klipper has been the second best upgrade I've made
| to my Ender3, with the best being a main board with silent
| stepping.
| ucirello wrote:
| OctoKlipper?
| fake-name wrote:
| Mainsail is SO MUCH nicer.
| bpye wrote:
| I should probably switch over... I've been using OctoPrint
| + Klipper for years and never got around to switching to
| Mainsail.
| Filligree wrote:
| I like Fluidd a little better, but honestly they're about
| the same.
| joshu wrote:
| i keep thinking about building a new machine to try out
| klipper, fancy extruders, and so on. i am reluctant to mess
| with my workhouse prusa.
| bb88 wrote:
| Yeah... I'm not going to do that either.
|
| I think what I'll do instead is get a good coreXY printer
| which runs klipper natively (like the Voron).
|
| But I think I really want is a tool changing printer a la the
| prusa xl. Prusa tends to do a lot of up front engineering
| that you just don't see. Plus the support I've got from them
| has been just fantastic.
| Filligree wrote:
| The XL will have official Klipper support (from Prusa)
| anyway.
| joshu wrote:
| i have preordered the xl. i just want to build a separate
| machine for messing with other stuff
| bb88 wrote:
| Congrats. I'm going to wait for the reviews before I
| order one, though I expect they'll be spectacular.
|
| I feel like with the likes of the Bambu(sp?) X1 and their
| fancy shmancy lidar sensor, it's only a matter of time
| before Prusa is going to need to push that into their
| printers. E.g. the lidar could show width, heighth, and
| any stringing from the filaments -- ideally making it
| easier to determine the specs for a new filament.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Prusa's firmware has a lot of features that Klipper doesn't
| support, such as the crash detection and the auto-
| calibration. It's one of my printer of mine that I have no
| plans to switch to Klipper on.
| joshu wrote:
| yeah, the prusa is too reliable to consider messing with.
|
| maybe i could get another used prusa somewhere...
| w-ll wrote:
| Klipper looks interesting. Im still running an old old
| Octoprint build on a pi because it works and dont wannna deal
| with it.
|
| How does it improve the print vs just sending gcode? My main pc
| is whats slicing and dicing and creating the gcode. How is the
| Klipper improving that?
| bb88 wrote:
| All 3d printers make translations based upon things like bed
| level, etc.
|
| Supposedly klipper is able to adjust for things like ringing
| or ghosting as well, where the frame wobbles a bit after the
| head moves.
|
| I'm sure there's others, but that strikes me as the most
| important one at the moment.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Indeed, Klipper can work with an accelerometer and cancel
| out harmonic resonance in the printer. It is the killer
| feature of Klipper IMO -- along with a configuration that
| is dirt simple (no compiling C and flashing firmware).
|
| Of note of course is that some of this is theoretically
| possible via OctoPrint as well.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| RRF supports both of those features, but hasn't been
| ported to many devices. With how hard Raspberry Pis are
| to get now, being able to run everything off the
| microcontroller is nice.
|
| There was a time we used RRF's DWC as an interface for
| Klipper too: https://github.com/Stephan3/dwc2-for-
| klipper-socket
| tcrenshaw wrote:
| Quote from a klipper's benefits page I found [1] "Klipper
| uses the extra computing power and built-in algorithms to
| better calculate step movement times for motor actions,
| achieving movement precision of 25 microseconds or lower.
| Scheduling movements with an external computer also allows
| your machine to can carry out more actions in a given
| period."
|
| It ends up meaning quicker, better quality prints. Input
| shaping and resonance compensation make a world of difference
| when printing quickly.
|
| I also have a bltouch on my ender3; I found the bed leveling
| procedure with the bltouch to be way easier and more precise
| with Klipper.
|
| 1. https://www.3dprintingbuff.com/what-are-the-benefits-of-
| klip...
| londons_explore wrote:
| The improvements are mostly higher quality prints, especially
| when printing fast.
|
| It also has a much better and more powerful configuration
| system. So for example if you want to edit the menu on the
| screen of the printer, you can, and it doesn't require a
| recompile.
| rcarmo wrote:
| I upgraded my Prusa clone to Klipper a little while ago and am
| loving it: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/07/09/1230
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| I upgraded to klipper a long time ago over marlin, and whilst
| its great and improves print quality (especially on slow 8 bit
| boards).
|
| It is not _better_ than marlin. Its very user hostile and
| generally the support between upgrades is very poor. Any error
| and Klipper will abort your print, when in most cases it
| absolutely does not need to.
|
| Basically its great for fast printing but you are nuts if you
| think the everyday 3d printer should run it in its current
| state.
| nemof wrote:
| i've been running octoprint for a long time, but i'd love to
| try klipper just to experiment because i hear such glowing
| things about it.
|
| the main thing that stops me adopting it is the absolute
| inability to get a raspberry pi right now to run mainsail on.
| i've got alerts set up for stock on plenty of sites, but
| they're basically like gold dust.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I'm about 8 months in to 3D printing and I've done direct
| drive, bltouch and dual z upgrades on my Ender 3. Through all
| that research I've not stumbled across Klipper. I'm fascinated
| and excited about it. I think I like nodding my printer almost
| as much as prototyping parts for other machines I'm making.
| Thanks for your choice to signup and share this.
| sitkack wrote:
| https://www.klipper3d.org/
| fabian2k wrote:
| OctoPrint is meant to be used with many different 3D printers
| and their default firmware. But that also means it is
| restricted to using a common interface most printers support,
| and there isn't anything else than sending text-based G-Code
| directly. And even that has varying levels of brokenness on
| different printers, the manufacturers don't seem to care that
| much about interoperability.
|
| Switching out the entire Firmware, which is what you need to do
| to use Klipper is an entirely different thing than adding a
| nice web UI in front of your existing 3D printer.
|
| The author of OctoPrint also said that she tried at some point
| to convince people to define a binary G-Code format, but
| apparently that went really badly. A more efficient format for
| transferring the data to the 3D printers would help to avoid
| the problems OctoPrint has to fight to get reasonable
| performance when printing. But it does not seem feasible to get
| the manufacturers and firmware writers to agree on anything
| there.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Earlier this year, the "Additive Manufacturing Forward"
| program was announced. One of the goals of this program is to
| set industry standards and develop training/certifications.
| I'm hoping the NIST and other standards-governing bodies
| (ISO, ASTM, ASME) will be in a position to accept RFCs for
| printer communication protocols, Gcode encoding, and other
| standards within coming years. AM Forward puts a 1-2 year
| timeline on proposed milestones. (edited: typo)
|
| [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| grepLeigh wrote:
| Klipper is a 3D printer firmware. You would compare it to
| Marlin, which is a common stock firmware on 3D printer
| microcontrollers. OctoPrint is a web application, built on a
| Flask/Tornado stack.
|
| You can use Klipper firmware with OctoPrint:
| https://www.klipper3d.org/Installation.html#configuring-octo...
|
| I agree that Klipper's features are excellent! The resonance
| compensation is most interesting to me. I'm someone who is
| deeply invested in algorithmically grading/estimating print
| quality. If you're reading this and want to learn more about
| how Klipper improves prints, check out Klipper's kinematics
| doc: https://www.klipper3d.org/Kinematics.html
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Very strong agree. Octoprint is incredibly slow, bloated, and
| just a poor performer overall. Klipper + Mainsail is such an
| insane upgrade that I feel like a fool for sticking to
| Octoprint for so long.
|
| Using Octoprint reminds me of maintaining a bloated Wordpress +
| jQuery blob website, and then someone shows you a snappy React
| version running on a cached edge provider. Night and day
| difference.
|
| Klipper and Klipper based UIs are making huge strides. They are
| just so responsive and capable.
| starik36 wrote:
| I am reading their website and I am a bit confused. It says,
| it's firmware. If I use Mainsail + Klipper, do I need to
| flash my 3D Printer's firmware to make it work?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes. It has a minimal firmware that runs on the printer,
| and then all the logic and complex stuff runs on the
| computer.
|
| If the two are unplugged, the print stops immediately.
| grepLeigh wrote:
| 1) You flash Klipper firmware to your 3D printer's
| microcontroller ("MCU" in Klipper docs).
| https://www.klipper3d.org/Installation.html#building-and-
| fla...
|
| 2) You run Klipper's server software ("Klippy host") on a
| Raspberry Pi (or other single-board computer). Klipper
| provides a JSON RPC API for communicating with your
| printer, without having to worry about serial baud rates or
| other low-level details. https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipp
| er/blob/master/docs/API_Se...
|
| 3) You must connect Klipper server (Pi) to the
| microcontroller running Klipper firmware.
|
| I couldn't find a list of supported boards, but you can see
| all the usual suspects here (stm32, rp2040, etc).
| https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/tree/master/src
|
| Klipper also provides the ability to use your Raspberry Pi
| as a _2nd_ controller if your 3D printer 's microcontroller
| doesn't have enough pin-outs to support your ha
| https://www.klipper3d.org/RPi_microcontroller.html?h=micro
|
| 4) Mainsail is a front-end webapp that talks to Moonraker,
| which is a back-end app that manages Files/Gcode/Print Job
| via HTTP, MQTT, and JSON RPC. Moonraker communicates with
| "Klippy Host" via JSON RPC. https://github.com/mainsail-
| crew/mainsail https://moonraker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
|
| Hope this helps! It's a wild world out there.
| iseanstevens wrote:
| Please note that Octoprint and Klipper are at different levels
| of functionality. It's not a choice between the two in any way.
|
| Octoprint is for job management/monitoring and is SUPER
| extensible. It gives you a web interface/camera view/manual
| control of the printer. You can do things like install a slicer
| plugin so you can drop an .stl file into the browser then it
| will slice and print.
|
| Klipper is more like printer firmware. It's lower level than
| Octoprint.
|
| The two can be used together.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| In practice, it is a choice between the two. Klipper based
| communities tend to stick to Klipper stuff and same with
| OctoPrint based communities. But yes, dedicated persons can
| use any combination of firmware + software that they want. It
| is one of the best parts of the open source 3D printing
| world!
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| That's funny. I've been using octoprint with klipper for
| several years. I've tried to research alternative frontends
| to octoprint, and there doesn't seem to be a clear winner
| for klipper. What's the official klipper frontend these
| days?
| 9wzYQbTYsAIc wrote:
| https://github.com/fluidd-core/fluidd
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| What makes that the official UI other than the repo
| description? What's the deal with mainsail? Both fluidd
| and mainsail look like the same project. Is there drama?
| What UI does Kevin O'Connor use?
| growt wrote:
| Interestingly Klipper recommends installing octopi on their
| website: https://www.klipper3d.org/Installation.html I
| think some of the comments here are too hard on octoprint,
| it is still kind of a universal pocket knife for 3d
| printing.
| jjeaff wrote:
| The klipper3d.org website says you need to install
| octoprint first and doesn't mention any alternatives.
| tcrenshaw wrote:
| Has octoprint improved its slicer? From what I remember and
| accorded to a quick web search [1], the inbuilt slicer has
| been abandoned. For me, an inbuilt slicker would be worth
| mixing octoprint and Klipper firmware.
|
| As an aside, I've been using combo of a container running
| xfce, cura, plus a vnc server and another container running
| guacamole, all on a proxmox host as a stand in as a web
| slicer.
|
| 1. https://plugins.octoprint.org/plugins/slicer/
| tcrenshaw wrote:
| I'll add that I prefer mainsail's ui to octoprint, but
| functionally they're basically equivalent, though I'll cede
| that Octoprint probably comes out on top as far as
| integrations. I had my Octoprint instance set so that I
| could control my 3d printers power relay through Home
| Assistant. I've yet to figure out how to do that in
| mainsail.
| jstanley wrote:
| Why do you need a web slicer? This just seems more work
| than running PrusaSlicer locally.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| That plugin isn't an official OctoPrint one.
| https://github.com/OctoPrint/OctoPrint-Slic3r is what you
| want.
| sschueller wrote:
| The klipper community seems extremely hostile towards marlin
| and octoprint (which isn't really the same or replaces it) for
| what ever reason. Klipper is good but it isn't the "end all be
| all".
|
| I personally use klipper together with ocotprint using
| octoklipper.
|
| I wish there was more working together than this unnecessary
| hostility sometimes.
| hellweaver666 wrote:
| I remember Thomas Salanderer (a very prominent 3d printing
| YouTuber) saying he refuses to use Klipper just because of
| how toxic their community is. God knows what lead to that
| kind of behaviour around a 3d printer firmware!). On the
| other hand I've experienced nothing but friendliness from
| Gina and the Octoprint community!
| booli wrote:
| Amazing to see OctoPrint on HN. In a weird way I owe my career to
| it and specially Gina.
|
| 8 years ago I started working at a 3D printing company as a
| support engineer, where the UI of the printer was not up to par.
| In a short period of time during my off hours I developed a
| different front-end that could sit on top of OctoPrint. The
| printer was able to be sold again and I got offered a software
| engineering job. Gina was so helpful on IRC, she often pushed me
| into Python documentation instead of solving the problem for me.
| We build the first plugins for OctoPrint at that time. The plug-
| in is still running on many printers in the wild.
|
| I have huge respect for Gina and OctoPrint, being able to make
| your opensource project your job.
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