OctoPrint for MakerBot (not 5th gen)

[Mark Walker]

I don't know, does everybody subscribe to 3Dprintertipstricksreviews?  If so, sorry about the spam since I posted it over there too.

I've tested it on a FlashForge Creator Pro and I have positive reports from others that have used it on an actual MakerBot Replicator Dual and others on various clones.

Today guysoft posted release 0.12.0 of OctoPi that includes the 1.2.1 release of OctoPrint that includes among other things a plugin manager and auto-updater.

The plugin manager is the key bit for running this with an x3g printer.

To get yours set up follow the instructions on https://github.com/guysoft/OctoPi to get and install the July 2015 image from the official mirror (link to the mirror is on that page too) and then:

1. Get the OctoPrint-GPX plugin:

• In Octoprint, choose Settings then Plugin Manager
• Click the "Get More..." button
• Find GPX in the list and click "Install"
• Restart OctoPrint (there's a command to do that on the "System" button at the top)
• Wait for a while and then refresh your browser

2. Set some settings: In OctoPrint, choose Settings then GPX, choose your printer type (Probably Replicator 1 or 1 Dual) and gcode flavor and leave the rest on default.

3. Choose a port and baudrate. (AUTO doesn't work) The port is probably /dev/ttyACM0 and the baudrate 115200.

4. Click connect

Ta da, a graph of hotend and bed temperature over time.  Just what you always needed.  :-)

You should also be able to see a list of files that are on your sd card (.x3g) and trigger them to print.  It only shows .x3g files that are in the root, OctoPrint doesn't really support folders yet (but there's a start in the source code so I expect it'll work at some point).

You can't use the upload to SD function in OctoPrint because it uploads it over the serial wire, which you don't really want to do (it's too slow and it has been removed from recent firmware).  I'm still working on making it integrate neatly with FlashAir so that's coming soon, but I got distracted with making an installer for gpx first.  Meanwhile, you can use the other methods for uploading to FlashAir or for small prints, just print the gcode from the pi.

The OctoPrint-GPX plugin is still rather new so if you run across issues, I'd love to hear about it on the github issue tracker: https://github.com/markwal/OctoPrint-GPX/issues

Thanks,

Mark

[Dan Newman]

I've been using it for perhaps a month now on a Sailfish Core-XY bot. It works quite well.
Mark's done a great job of integrating X3G with it and has been very helpful.

Dan