OctoPrint

[bdongkdong]

Please consider sponsoring this incredible project - https://github.com/sponsors/foosel

[glitch13]

If all Octoprint provided was the ability to print directly from Cura it would be worth it. Luckily it does much more than that.

The only downside I've found is I've lost the Ender 3 Pro's resume ability if the power goes out.

[blisterpeanuts]

I put my Prusa on a UPS, and was delighted to watch it just keep right on printing during a 10 minute power outage a week ago.

[jcims]

I tried it with the Ender 3 V2 and there is some kind of bandwidth issue that kept it from printing successfully. Exact same gcode worked great from sdcard, failed miserably via octoprint. I’m guessing it has to do with the available ports?

[StavrosK]

Octoprint is amazing. There are also some very high-quality plug-ins, like Octolapse, which Octoprint's standardized plugin interface makes a breeze to use.

I upgraded my printer's motherboard and didn't even bother to connect the screen and dial, Octoprint is now the printer's GUI, as far as I'm concerned.

[sydd]

It seems I'm the minority here, but I dont like OctoPrint. My main issues:

- Terribly slow startup and load times.

- no support for mobile devices just with some app.

- While it can do lots of things with plugins they tend to kill performance which might cause artifacts on the print.

- slow on updates, they ware on Python 2.x until this year.

I'm currently migrating to mainsail (https://github.com/meteyou/mainsail), which looks much better.

[leipert]

I think they handled the python upgrade professionally, the author even went and fixed some of the communities more popular plugins to be python 3 compatible. When the python 3 update didn’t work for me, the rollback scripts worked great and a few months later I just upgraded to python 3.

All in all the main maintainer, which is working full time on it, is communicating well with the community. The iteration cycle has become faster during this last year, and updates seem to be rather stable.

Regarding the performance killing plugins, never had a problem on a RPi 4. What are you using?

[zshift]

OctoPrint only has a single main developer. They also spend a lot of time triaging bugs (https://github.com/OctoPrint/OctoPrint/issues). I'm sure they'd appreciate any help they can get.

[InvertedRhodium]

To counter your example, I run a Prusa Mk3s and recently bought a mini and have quite literally never run either printer without OctoPrint.

I've got no interest in shuffling around sd cards in order to print models, nor do I want it connected to my primary pc that gets rebooted regularly.

And in their defence, I've been running OctoPrint for about 3 years and never had an issue with it across any updates.

[franga2000]

Idk what you mean about plugins and performance. Yes, the UI and startup get slower, but print performance? I ran it on an OrangePi Zero (== one of the jankiest SBCs out there) with a bunch of plugins and one webcam without a single OctoPrint-related failure for more than half a year. I ended up switching to something powerful only because of power supply issues (OrangePi are even more voltage-sensitive than RaspPi).

[lukami]

I agree, OctoPrint is very slow to load with the default settings. I disabled these plugins and now it loads very quickly: - Action Command Notification Support - Action Command Prompt Support - Announcements Plugin - Anonymous Usage Tracking - Discovery - Error tracking - File Check - Firmware check - Logging - Pi Support Plugin

[ehnto]

No app is a feature for me. It's a fairly big ask for a free open source project to navigate the Google Play and Apple stores too, I feel app stores have no place in the open source ecosystem. I wouldn't wish that headache on any project trying to provide something for free.

[vorpalhex]

What device are you running it on that you are seeing slow startup and load times?

Even on a Pi 2 with a plugin heavy instance (TouchUI with custom theme, octolapse, etc) the web interface loaded acceptably fast enough.

Python 3 support was in Beta/RC for a very long time intentionally so plugin authors could update.

[tomn]

Duet controllers are another good option of OctoPrint doesn't appeal. Having everything integrated into one board makes a lot of things easier, and from a safety perspective it feels a lot more trustworthy than random cloned driver boards.

[johnboiles]

Does it only work with the Klipper printer firmware or can it work with Marlin?

[_jal]

I have a 3D printer, and I don't get it at all. I have yet to need to print something remotely, and can't think of a scenario in which I would want to.

I guess if you have reason to want process pictures?

[thetinguy]

Are you using an old raspberry pi? Going from the 3 to 4 helped loading time immensely. Although you still have to get a new board.

[thendrill]

You forgot to mention Klipper which is an amazin project and firmware.

[bjustin]

I used OctoPrint on a RPi to drive my 3D printer for years. It was great. I added the RPi camera and could keep an eye on prints remotely, which while leaving home while printing was maybe not a great idea, certainly was convenient.

[mcshicks]

Yep that's exactly my setup. I don't even leave the house I have the printer in a closet and can peek at it from time to time while watching tv. I added an LED strip I can turn on/off from octoprint as a light for the camera. One thing I really like is just being able to look at the first couple layers just before I hit print so I really know I've got the right file loaded.

[mbreese]

OctoPrint is one of the reasons I got a 3D printer. I thought the idea of being able to view and control the printer remotely was a great bonus. Now I basically have one Pi running the printer, and another one next to it running a web browser connected to OctoPrint. I really found it to be a great way to monitor what’s happening in a more interactive way. Instead of just watching a few numbers on the side display of the printer, you can get so much more information. Because of this, I think it makes printing more fun.

[mutecipher]

This was the first "upgrade" I did when I finally bought a 3D printer. And I don't think I could go without it at this point. Can't recommend enough.

[wincy]

I just got a resin 3D printer and had to do some digging to find something similar to OctoPrint for a resin printer. I found Mariner [0] which I’m thinking of installing in my Sonic Mini 4K. It’s limited to a few types of resin printers but I was feeling left out from how cool OctoPrint looks.

[0] https://github.com/luizribeiro/mariner

[l9o]

Hey! I wrote mariner :) There's been people in the community that got the Sonic Mini 4K working.

mariner is obviously not as fancy and sophisticated as OctoPrint, but I'm happy to take pull requests and improve it. Since MSLA printers are quite different from FDM, I found it would be simpler to write mariner than to add support for MSLA printers on OctoPrint.

[shadycuz]

Im really surprised to hear it didn't work for a resin printer. You should create an issue for it.

[krakenapp]

Shameless plug for my iOS OctoPrint client, Kraken: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kraken-for-octoprint/id1472939...

[vorpalhex]

I've run octoprint on a dedicated pi for several years now. My latest build is a Raspi 4 booting off usb and it runs a modified frontend quite nicely.

Fantastic project.

[haram_masala]

One of my favorite things about the Prusa 3 series is that you can embed a Raspberry Pi Zero running OctoPrint in it - it fits right inside the power supply enclosure. Bam, you've got a networked Prusa with no external anything.

[starky]

It is highly discouraged to use a Pi Zero with the current versions of OctoPrint, it just simply doesn't have enough computing power and causes quite a few problems. Prusa really should remove the page in their wiki.

[sschueller]

I have octoprint on all my printers. Klipper or marlin but always with octoprint on a pi. It is incredibly useful and there are many plugins for what ever you may need. Additionaly I have Printoid om android which talks to octoprint.

[IgorPartola]

OctoPrint is great. I use it with a modified Ender 3 Pro and Cura + Cura's OctoPrint plugin. Having said that, I have been very curious about https://github.com/meteyou/mainsail. I can't quite tell if it'll work with Cura so I can just hit "print" from the slicer and have it go, but the UI is quite slick and free of a lot of random notifications, etc. that come with OctoPrint.

[mech422]

I've got 2 printers - an artillery sidewinder and a big duet driven beast...both have an octoprint. Octolapse is soo much better then anything I've found for the Duet.

The SideWinder was a breeze to setup. I need to sit down and spend a day hooking up the Duet though - gonna try using https://github.com/kriechi/DuetRRF-timelapse

[shadycuz]

I've always found the architecture to be amazing. It's my go to reference for implementing things like plugins or events into other python projects.

[raihansaputra]

This is a pretty old thread at ~12 hours, but there's someone putting in an active effort to enable OctoPrint to run directly off of an Android device. Still pretty early days. The author currently still distributes and gathers feedback through the linked Telegram group.

https://github.com/feelfreelinux/octo4a

[mrfusion]

So basically you install this on a dedicated, network connected computer and the it connects to the printer? How tough is the setup?

[ehnto]

Well it goes onto a raspberry pi which acts as a web server, that connects to the printer. You then visit the octoprint website interface to manage connected printers. That's handy because I can do it from my phone or computer so long as I am on the wifi, and you can in theory reach it remotely while out of the house if you set up your network to allow that.

[schrodingersket]

Not at all in my anecdotal experience! My Prusa Mini just connected to my old Pi via MicroUSB and it all "just worked" for me. Ended up adding a Pi camera to the setup and installed the OctoLapse plugin to automatically generate timelapse videos of my prints; been very happy with it all so far.

[jvolkman]

For those that like tinkering with 3d printers, check out Klipper. It's an alternative "firmware" that differs in that the kinematic brains run on a raspberry pi and the actual firmware is just a minimal binary that consumes a reduced instruction set. It works with Octoprint, or with Klipper-specific tools via its api server.

[sgtnoodle]

Klipper is great. It makes 8-bit control boards about as effective as 32-bit ones. Having a single easy to modify config file is nice too. There's some quirks about it that take a while to wrap your head around, but once you do there's really no going back (at least for me).

[h2odragon]

(At least as of a couple years ago when i last used it) Octoprint is a lovely, well integrated system that comes close to being easy for newbs and utilitarian users to deploy; while still not impossibly complicated for hacking into whatever adjustments you need. That's a neat trick.

[oarfish]

10 Minutes of browsing the website and I have no idea how to set this up with my printer. I'm sure it's great and all, but the info on what printer I need and how to set it up besides installing the software on an RPi should be accessible right from the main page.