As part of my other post with regards to the current state of disrepair that digifab is in, I’d like to put my hand up and say I will commit to completing the following within the next two weeks:
order all of the new raspberry pi boards and accessories (will talk to Ian to get budget)
set up all of the new raspberry pi boards on our printers and install octopi
mount all of the raspberry pis properly, label them all, and tidy up the bench
create an online induction for our FDM 3D printers, similarly to how I did the kWeld one
Just spoke to Ian, apparently Aaron has just ordered the Pis. @crofty please let me know when they arrive so I can set them up. I was going to do them on the weekend as umart has them in stock, and cheaper, but I guess you’ve already ordered them. Have you ordered the SD cards yet? We don’t need the 32GB cards, the 16GB is more than enough.
As we are doing a bit of a custom setup and monitoring of the printers, in a way that most people are not used to ie, 3dprinteros with octoprint, I will be the one setting up the SD cards for the pi’s and I can give access to the access to the backend to anyone that requests it.
This is the reason for the 32gb sd cards as the printers will be logging everything that happens to the printers, I would like the logs to go back as far back as we can.
While I appreciate your request to setup the printers I feel I will be better suited to doing this.
I am happy for mounting and online induction for the printers to be done by @jabelone, if that is a project he would like to take on
I’m disappointed that you’ve chosen to unilaterally change the entire printing workflow without consulting with or telling the existing printer maintainers.
What do you think 3D Printer OS has over our current octoprint based setup? I feel like this is going to turn into another gate kept thing that will be difficult for general members to access and maintain - especially with a proprietary cloud based system.
I’m concerned about 3D Printer OS as I think octoprint suits our needs far better, because:
We will have to retrain members to use 3D Printer OS as it is completely different software and a different workflow to our current octoprint based system.
We will have to setup all of our plugins/integrations like discord posts, slicing profiles etc. again.
After looking at their UI and workflow, 3D Printer OS looks a lot more complex from start to finish than octoprint is (especially for casual use).
You don’t get single sign on (which we’re in the process of rolling out to all of our other digital services) until you move up to their educational/enterprise price tier. This tier doesn’t have a price, only a “contact us” button. Octoprint already has an oauth plugin which would be reasonably easy to integrate into the upcoming member portal single sign on system.
3D Printer OS is closed sourced and proprietary software. HSBNE encourages the use of open source software (especially when there’s a good option like octoprint). In fact, if I recall correctly, one of the reasons that Lulzbot gave us a free 3D printer is because we use a lot of open source software.
Most of our 3D printer maintainers (as far as I am aware, happy to be corrected) are more familiar with octoprint than 3D Printer OS.
Have you got a budget approved to pay for 3D Printer OS? The “free” plan doesn’t have API access or allow for user management which doesn’t give us much above what octoprint offers.
3D Printer OS is cloud based and relies on an active internet connection to function.
I just want to address this specifically. I am greatly concerned at why you’re doing something that most people are not used to. This is a sure fire way to end up with something that is gate kept, even if not done intentionally. It also means most of the current maintainers are going to have to learn yet another thing to effectively maintain the printers.
no the user will still have the same front end they always had
these will still work 100% due to it still having the octoprint frontend
this is solved because 3dprinterOS is just going to be a for remote monitoring of the printers not a complete replacement of the frontend for users
dont need one as we dont need the API access as this will all be done by octoprint
There is offline access for 3dprinterOS as well you do not have to have an active internet connection.
As I stated above the 3dprinterOS is only for the monitoring of the printers, To ensure the printers are not being used incorrectly or damaging the printers.
If there is anything I would like to reiterate THIS DOES NOT REPLACE OCTOPRINT IT ADDS TO IT
Ok, so to be clear, users will still log on to each printer individually and upload their jobs to OctoPrint? If all it is doing is “monitoring” the printers, then I don’t see any reason for complicating things further with even more (closed source cloud based) software.
OctoPrint already logs every print job and start/finish notifications into Discord. When I finish the SSO system for the portal, we can set it up so members have to login to use OctoPrint so we can track who is using them. What benefits does 3DPrinterOS give us over this?
If you’re wanting to collect detailed usage metrics about each printer then a much better way would be to install this OctoPrint prometheus plugin. I’m happy to setup an instance of InfluxDB or similar on porthack01 which would allow us to collect extremely detailed metrics and make customisable reports and dashboards using something like grafana.
That prometheus plugin exports the following data:
python version - as info
octoprint version, hostname, os - as info
actual temperature - as gauge with tool identifier label
target temperature - as gauge with tool identifier label
client number - as gauge; the actually connected clients to the host
printer state - as info
started prints - as counter
failed prints - as counter
done prints - as counter
cancelled prints - as counter
timelaps count - as counter
print progress - as gauge with path label
slice progress - as gauge with path label
print total time - as counter
last print time - as gauge
fan speed - as gauge
extrusion total - as counter
x, y and z travel - as a counter
last print extrusion - as gauge
If we’re still using OctoPrint in the same way as before, I don’t know why you feel this way. If you want to jump in and set everything up before I get a chance then go for it. But I want to get all of the Pis setup ASAP so the printers are more reliable and usable. If you’re still keen on integrating with 3DPrinterOS, then there’s nothing stopping you from installing the plugin after OctoPrint is setup.
Just trying to understand the concept here -
Users will slice and print on Octoprint as they currently do.
3dprinterOS offers remote sensing (a single dashboard where one can see all the printers stats?)
So how does 3dprinterOS monitor third party (OctoPrint) usage?
I can’t see a plugin in the Octoprint repo., or any mention of supporting third-party gcode streamers on the 3dprinterOS website.
Or do see slice with 3dprinterOS and print with Octoprint?
Yeah they’ve stopped including the official cura slicer plugin with OctoPrint by default. I’ve personally moved to PrusaSlicer which has been giving me better results than anything else.
I’d like to see the computer on the printer bench turn into our slicing computer so that members don’t have to bring their own computers in (many don’t) to be able to use the 3D printers.
Then members can use all of the profiles loaded up into prusa slicer and print using the “send to octoprint” functionality. This would allow members to have a full blown desktop based GUI to re-arrange, rotate and scale their models, then easily send it to the correct printer. They could then use OctoPrint to manage the printer just like we currently do so there would be minimal changes to the print workflow.
