Octoprint

To manage and allow for web access to my 3D printer I am running Octoprint on a cheap Intel Celeron N5105-based micro machine that picked up on AliExpress for less than the going rate of a decent Raspberry Pi with a case and power supply.

Running on Ubuntu

Since I don't run the Octoprint Raspberry Pi distribution, I had to get everything set up myself.

Software Installation

I created an Octoprint user (octoprint) so that everything could run under a non-privileged user. Their home is /home/octoprint and the software is installed into a Python virtualenv.

I have systemd managing Octoprint as a service unit in /etc/systemd/system/octoprint.service:

[Unit]
Description=Octoprint
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/octoprint/octoprint/bin/octoprint serve
WorkingDirectory=/home/octoprint/octoprint
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=octoprint
CPUSchedulingPolicy=rr
CPUSchedulingPriority=80

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

I set CPUSchedulingPriority to be relatively high to ensure that there's never a blip in the gcode flow between it and the printer.

Once you put that in place, you can enable them:

$ sudo systemctl enable octoprint
$ sudo systemctl start octoprint
$ systemctl status octoprint
● octoprint.service - Octoprint
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/octoprint.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2023-06-09 21:56:00 PDT; 2 days ago
   Main PID: 883 (octoprint)
      Tasks: 37 (limit: 9138)
     Memory: 1.5G
        CPU: 57min 19.305s
     CGroup: /system.slice/octoprint.service
             └─883 /home/octoprint/octoprint/bin/python3 /home/octoprint/octoprint/bin/octoprint serve

Webcam

One of the great things about Octoprint is being able to integrate a webcam into your workflow. This can give you both a real-time view of what's going on, but also, using Octolapse, generate time-lapses of the print and save them for review.

To get it running on the Ubuntu distribution, I unfortunately had to use a Snap distribution for the mjpg-streamer tool that is used. I'm sure I could have gotten it running otherwise, but after a few false starts, I just called "done" and kept moving.

Like Octoprint itself, I have systemd managing the software. I used the following unit file in /etc/systemd/system/mjpg-streamer.service.

[Unit]
Description=Motion JPEG Streamer
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/snap/bin/mjpg-streamer -i "input_uvc.so -r 1920x1080 -f 30" -o "output_http.so -w /var/snap/mjpg-streamer/current/www/"
WorkingDirectory=/tmp
StandardOutput=inherit
StandardError=inherit
Restart=always
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Finally, like with Octoprint, you can enable and start it:

$ sudo systemctl enable mjpg-streamer
$ sudo systemctl start mjpg-streamer
$ systemctl status mjpg-streamer
● mjpg-streamer.service - Motion JPEG Streamer
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/mjpg-streamer.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2023-06-09 21:56:00 PDT; 2 days ago
   Main PID: 882 (mjpg-streamer.s)
      Tasks: 0 (limit: 9138)
     Memory: 12.9M
        CPU: 913ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/mjpg-streamer.service
             ‣ 882 /bin/sh /snap/mjpg-streamer/42/bin/mjpg-streamer.sh -i "input_uvc.so -r 1920x1080 -f 30" -o "output_>

Plugins

I have found these plugins to Octoprint, among the many hundreds, to be especially useful.

• Bed Visualizer
• Cost Estimation
• Display Layer Progress
• Exclude Region
• Heater Timeout
• Octolapse
• OctoPod. Integrates with the iOS app OctoPod that gives you real-time access to your printer over your iOS device. It can even work on AppleTV.
• Print Job History
• PrintTimeGenius
• Simple Emergency Stop
• Spool Manager

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