Best method for connecting OctoPI to Smoothie

[WZ9V]

Out of all the the methods listed in the Wiki what's considered to be the most reliable and fastest method (hardware/software) to connect the Raspberry Pi 2 running OctoPi to the SmoothieBoard?

[Arthur Wolf]

Hardware is probably the best method around ( you'll need to teach octoprint to talk to smoothie over the network, see : http://smoothieware.org/octoprint )

Your other option is USB serial, which works. And then there is also UART, which also works.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 11:34 PM, WZ9V <dfrue...@gmail.com> wrote:

Out of all the the methods listed in the Wiki what's considered to be the most reliable and fastest method (hardware/software) to connect the Raspberry Pi 2 running OctoPi to the SmoothieBoard?

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[wolfmanjm]

FWIW serial uart is not recommended for controlling smoothie from anything as a lot of debug and logs gets sent to it which confuses most host programs.

On Monday, November 9, 2015 at 2:36:12 PM UTC-8, Arthur Wolf wrote:

Hardware is probably the best method around ( you'll need to teach octoprint to talk to smoothie over the network, see : http://smoothieware.org/octoprint )

Your other option is USB serial, which works. And then there is also UART, which also works.

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 11:34 PM, WZ9V <dfrue...@gmail.com> wrote:

Out of all the the methods listed in the Wiki what's considered to be the most reliable and fastest method (hardware/software) to connect the Raspberry Pi 2 running OctoPi to the SmoothieBoard?

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[Leon Grossman]

Having just been through this:

• You can setup a TCP port to Smoothie from a Raspberry Pi but it's an annoying bit of work and you can't print from it that way (from the Pi, you can trigger an SD card print but then what's the point).
• You can connect by USB and it works. You can even print from USB but you'll probably run into performance problems at some point.
• I haven't tried using the UART.

Basically, I have an OctoPi setup and disconnected it because it was more of a pain than it was worth since I couldn't turn off my printer with the Pi attached (USB power) and printing from my LCD and SD card is easy enough.

Good luck and, definitely, let us know if you find more positive results!

[WZ9V]

Thanks. I was using a LCD and SD card but it decided to start acting weird. I've been using my laptop over USB but as you can imagine that's a pain. I like the webcam ability of OctoPi. I've just been wondering what the best ethernet attachment would be from another Linux box. I've looked at the Wiki and there are several alternatives, just not sure which to chase down. I do want to ditch the USB but that would probably be easiest at first. My current board does not have ethernet but the new build is using a 5XC which does.

[JFettig]

USB has been less than reliable for me regardless the printer I hook up to, I've had prints stop mid print with a rambo, and just sitting idle it'll disconnect using a smoothieboard. I still leave mine connected so I can calibrate over wifi but haven't done any printing with it because I simply don't trust it.

Leon - there is a diode on the smoothieboard that you can remove that prevents the USB from powering the smoothieboard 

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/smoothieware-support/usb$20power$20/smoothieware-support/dEuh7wTOky8/IpaQVX6axFAJ

[WZ9V]

I've had decent luck with USB so far but I am noticing more and more weird disconnects as I use it more. Once I get the 5XC going l'll try the built in network stuff but I do kind of like the OctoPi interface with webcam support.

[Mikk Kiilaspää]

What was the host in your case for the USB connection?
I've had zero issues with USB (on either RAMPS1.4, Azteeg X5 or Smoothieboard X4) once I switched over from connecting the printer directly to a Raspberry Pi that is powered by the same ATX PSU than the controller board itself.

Last time I had performance problems with USB connection was with some old Cura version that didn't crunch up small moves and with a Printrboard clone (D8).
This should especially be not the case with Smoothie over its hardware USB, which is loads faster than a normal USB to Serial bridge which then connects to the usual UART interface on the MCU.