Nice intro on Adafruit today for making the Octoprint UI into a touch panel based UI https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/11/19/raspberry-pi-octoprint-touch-ui-3dprinting/
I like it, might watch what people do with it in the coming months re screen choices. Looks like the Pi branded tablet/screen doesn't have Wi-Fi? Saw a dongle stuck in it which is a shame
Would be very nice to have a touch screen on the BigBox. Something I will consider strongly to add later
Correct, the Pi only has ethernet built in, you need a dongle for wifi. Given how cheap and tiny they are it's not a big deal ( https://www.adafruit.com/products/2638 ). I will be running on ethernet anyway, but will probably just add in the touch screen with a 3D printed case for convenience so if I am in the room I can see it quickly without having to have another device with me... https://www.adafruit.com/products/2718
Man that looks like a very neat addition to every 3d printer. Will keep it in mind to adapt it for my own printer design.
Does Octopi control the printer direct from the Pi or dies it talk to a server which talks to the printer? i.e. Does a bad Wi-Fi connection mean a print could be ruined? I guess it just posts out other and of it goes? Just wondering if solid Ethernet connecting is better than Wi-Fi...
Well, why not use an ordinary tablet to control Octoprint? Put a WiFi dongle onto your Raspberry and enjoy the best of both worlds? I can do that even from the other side of the world via VPN if I have to. Speaking of that - Sanjay, is the Raspberry mounted inside the machine so we have enough room at the USB ports to fit a decently sized USB-WiFi stick?
These are not mutually exclusive. Most of the time I anticipate using the web interface from my Mac or iPad (and in a pinch iPhone). But if I am in my shop, I probably won't have my laptop with me and if I need to pause, stop or whatever a job, then having a touch interface onto the queue manager is super helpful. The same could be said about my putting hard-cutoff e-stop buttons on all my maker gear (laser, 3D printer, etc). Sure you can stop all these from software, but a hard-stop electrical e-stop button on the device is useful in the moment when badness is ensuing and you need to prevent machine damage, injury or fire right-freakin-now!
Fair enough. Since I run my printer at home, there is always access to a computer, didn't think about shop scenarios. Since Octoprint with the touch-UI can be controlled from a phone (which I always have on me), it shouldn't be a big deal. But yeah, having that thing built in as a front panel is surely more useful than just the common LCD controller.
T The pi itself controls the printer directly and runs a web server you can use to view stats, temp and a live stream if you have a camera. You can drop files into a shared folder on the pi and tell it to print them.
Hi guys (and Gals, I am new here (and some what new to 3d printing) but not computer hardware or the Raspberry pi, I been searching over the past few days for more info (which includes this thread as one of my search results) in trying to get the Octoprint pi set up, to be a full touch screen pi (using the official PI touch screen), I pretty much have every thing set up and good to go, however I seem to have a few issues, and I hope you guys might be able to help enlighten me. I first off want to apologize if perhaps this is not the best thread/area for my questions, but it seems relevant so I figure I will try. I want to set the pi to be 100% accessible over the network (I can handle that my self using a VNC or similar programme) but the part I also want to have is the ability to use the touch screen its self (where the printer is going I will have access to at almost all times or the other half of the family will also) so we want to be able to use the touch screen as a part of the printer (therefore making it a "stand alone" unit like our cube3 printer. here is the problem I am having at this time and hope you guys can help me solve it, when we try to login to the pi using the screen name "pi" and the password (we set up a basic 1234 style password for now to assist with troubleshooting) it looks to login, screen goes black like it is logging in, then it goes right back to the login screen wanting our username and password. sorry for a long winded post and I hope you guys can help solve this!! We would love to get this printer set up as a stand alone unit for use by anyone including kids... If it helps here is the info of what were working with Raspberry pi B+ quad core edition Official pi touch screen Printer: Kossel (mini??) with heated bed delta style printer latest version of octoprint (0.13 I think) [as of this post]
When you say you "login" do you mean at the command line on the Pi? Or via ssh or octoprint? If the touchscreen is giving issues (if I had to guess the Xwindows settings aren't pointing to the right display). I would go in via ssh (in case others who aren't computer familiar) do ssh pi@octoprint.local (or ip address). This should let you log in. If it doesn't something is horribly wrong, if it does, go sudo raspi-config and set your startup to be command line, and reboot and then try logging into the console (i.e. touchscreen) using the keyboard. If that won't work, the kernel magic that makes the screen work must be corrupt or something.
Oh forgot the last step. If it does let you log in via the console on the CLI, then try to start X11 with startx which will likely fail, but at least you will see the error...
by login I mean the GUI login screen (trying to set this up to be as friendly to people who know nothing about this stuff), I will try your suggestions and see if any thing different happens Thanks for the reply
Another way to get a touch screen is to upgrade the electronics to Duet WiFi, which gives you the web interface and optional touch screen without needing an RPi. See https://forum.e3d-online.com/index.php?threads/bigbox-duetwifi-controller.1766.
