Remote 3D Printing with OctoPi

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Remote control of 3D printers is a particularly appealing concept. We believe using your new 3D printer should be as simple as plugging it into your PC, uploading some G-Code and pressing ‘Print’. However, having a laptop or desktop PC cluttering up …

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Hey guys, we have a Taz 5, Taz 6 and Lulzbot Mini in house that we are controlling using Raspberry Pi’s running Octoprint. We found when running these multiple instances of OctoPrint and accessing them simultaneously over the WiFi it was really bogging down our network, causing all sorts of problems for everyone.

We decided to grab a DLink 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch from the local Officeworks (~$50) and a couple of RJ45 Cat5 cables we had in-stock to add these to our LAN. The solution worked a treat; also because of the native ethernet support with OctoPi we were able to just plug-and-play.

Might be something to consider if you are running OctoPi’s around your home and the Wifi seems to be slow

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I’m looking at doing this as my printer is at home and I work elsewhere, sometimes my printer will be running for days at a tive and would like to keep an eye on it. What would I need to get to run it threw to a mobile phone to control the printer or would it have to be computer operated?
Also is the dlink something I should use as I’m on wifi at home? Thanks

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Great questions.

You can set your Internet Gateway up to allow connections through using some Port forwarding and some other networking wizardry. I’d advise that it’s not the most secure way of accessing an OctoPrint setup from the wider internet though. For that, you should use one of the Plugins developed for OctoPrint. This one called OctoPrint Anywhere allows you to access your OctoPrint server via a secure login. Instructions & Link here.

In regard to the DLink switch: having a wired network connection between your Raspberry Pi and home network can reduce traffic on the WiFi interface, which might speed up your internet connections on other devices using the same WiFi network. However, it’s really not necessary.

hi,
does the Pi camera stream ‘live video’ or is it multiple frames per second video like ‘motion’ ?
also if you notice the print ‘going wrong’ how quickly can you shut it down via OctoPi?

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The Pi streams multiples frames per second from the attached camera stream. The controls are live, so once you see the print going ‘wrong’, you can stop it ‘instantly’. Well, there might be a second or two delay, depending on your network interface, but it’s fast.