In this video, I'm going to share the
absolute best must-have OctoPrint plugins to level up your 3D printing experience. And no, it's not because my office
is too messy to record anywhere else this week, at least not entirely. Let's dive in. For those of you who don't know,
let me first explain what the heck OctoPrint is at a high level. OctoPrint is a free open source
application that allows you to connect your 3D printer to a
computer, any computer, including a simple, dedicated Raspberry Pi. The benefits of this are manyfold. First, it takes any dumb 3D printer
and adds smart features to it, like wifi connectivity, a camera, and the
ability to monitor your prints from afar. It also allows you to upload files without
using SD cards and things like that. Plus, it gives you a much easier,
nicer interface for doing things like preheating, selecting which
file to print, and much, much more. Which is a great segue into
our first must-have plug-in. UI Customizer. I know, I know beauty is in the
eye of the beholder, but frankly, I have always found that the default
OctoPrint interface is really ugly. There's no nice way to say that. It's not only about aesthetics, though,
before we add any other plugins, we want to fix and clean up the interface
so that we can cram more stuff into it and more functionality without it
becoming overwhelming or dis-organized. And that is where UI Customizer comes in. Sure, there are other plugins that allow
you to skin your OctaPrint interface, but UI Customizer is unique in that it
allows you to move things into various tabs, change various aspects of the
user interface, and much, much more. Now, I highly, highly recommend
it, especially if you like me, like this dark mode and wanna
be able to move things around. All right. The next plugin you're going to need
to download is called Dashboard. It allows you to, well create a dashboard
of your printer's key stats, such as fan speeds, temperatures, layers, and more. Now, this is especially helpful for
monitoring what's going on with your printer at any given time at a glance. Of course you can customize what you want
to see and where, I have it very simple here, but this is definitely a must have. Okay, before we move on to the more
functional stuff, let's just add one more aesthetic one that really
improves your quality of life. It's called Slicer, it's called Slicer
Thumbnails, and it will display a thumbnail of whatever it is that you are
printing on your OctoPrint interface, which is going to be really useful
for one of the plugins I'm going to share towards the end of the video. Now all you need to do here is
install the plugin and configure your slicer profiles to send
thumbnails in whatever size you want. It works with all major slicers and voila,
you can actually see what you're printing. Amazing! All right, with the aesthetics outta the
way, let's talk about adding some real functionality to your printer, and I'm
not going to beat around the bush here. This one is the single most useful
of all, and it will save you a ton of time and a ton of filament, which
means it'll save you a ton of money. It's called Cancel Objects, and it does
exactly what it sounds as do, honestly, most of the plugins on this list. Not super creative with
the names, but that's okay. What's cool about this plugin is that
by configuring your slicer to label individual objects in the G code, you
can selectively cancel specific objects, mid print, if one of them fails, rather
than canceling the entire print for fear of that one object moving around
and destroying the rest of the print. Now, this one alone has saved me literally
kilos of filament, and I know you're going to enjoy it as much as I do. So if you do make sure
to hit that like button. By the way, on the topic of saving failed
prints, let's talk about remote access. By default, your OctoPrint installation
is limited to your local network, meaning that if you leave your
house, I don't have that problem, but if you do leave your house,
you're going to lose access to it. Sure you could set up your own VPN
and tunnel into your home network, but that's a bit over my head and I worry
about internet security if I do that. Instead, I recommend that you check out
OctoEverywhere, a free plugin that just so happens to be this video sponsor. But honestly, I've used it for years
before they even sponsored the show. OctoEverywhere is a plug-and-play add-on
that allows you to monitor and control your printer or printers from anywhere in
the world quickly, safely, and securely. It works with any app or interface
you want to use, such as the mobile apps, OctoPod, Apple TV apps, or
just the standard web interface. You can stream your webcam, upload
files, get notifications to your favorite messaging apps, and much, much more. Best of all, they recently launched
their Gadget AI, which is an AI print failure monitoring solution, which
will pause your prints and alert you if they look like they're failing. You can even share a live feed
of your 3D prints with friends, family, or customers, so they can
see the print as it progresses. I love sharing a live feed
with my Etsy customers. It has gotten me some awesome feedback. Now, what I love most about OctoEverywhere
is just how affordable it is. You can use the basic
feature set for free. Yes, free. Or add up to five printers and
more advanced functionality for just $2.99 a month. That's a total bargain for everything
you're getting, so I highly recommend you check them out and support the channel by
cooking the link in the description below. Thank you OctoEverywhere for
making this video and this channel possible and allowing me to make
videos for all of you like these. And now let's get into the next plugin. So we talked a bit about AI with
OctoEverywhere, and that reminds me of another plugin we really
need to add - Print Time Genius. Have you ever noticed that
your slicer's estimate of print times are, well, they're wrong. They're like really, really wrong. Print Time Genius is a learning
algorithm that will set up, well Print Time Genius is a learning algorithm
that will learn how fast your printer actually prints as you go, and then it
gives you accurate print time estimates. This is super helpful for so many
reasons, and best of all, it costs you nothing, just like everything else on
this list, including OctoPrint itself. I don't know if I mentioned that. Okay, so you're uploading
G codes remotely, you're printing stuff at faster... my printer is talking to me. Okay, so you're uploading G codes
remotely, you're printing stuff at a faster clip than ever before. Well, pretty soon you're going to have
a C of files that looks like this. Super overwhelming. And by default, OctoPrint only
allows you to delete one file at a time, and then it needs to refresh
the interface between each one. Forget that noise. With File Manager, you can add checkboxes
next to the file, selecting as many as you want, and then delete them all at once. It might seem like a silly little thing,
but if you print as much as me, it saves a ton of time between deleting and
scrolling through a million G code files to find the one that you're looking for. Definitely download File Manager. Speaking of saving time, wouldn't it be
super convenient if instead of needing to go to your computer to select those G code
files to print or preheat your printer or all that type of stuff, you just had a
nice touch screen right on your printer. You know, like the really expensive
printers like the Bambu Carbon, and by the way, not just a touchscreen that
works with your printer's functions like the Prusa Mini or the newer Ender-3S,
but a touchscreen that allowed you to actually interact with all the features
of OctoPrint itself, such as choosing G codes, filament management, which I'm not
actually going to go into because I don't really use it between all my different
printers, but it does a whole lot more. Now, this is especially useful if your
printer doesn't have a touchscreen, and fortunately you can add one for a few
bucks and print a housing for it like I did to make it all work together. You just need to download OctoDash, which
you'll have to install from the command line, and then add OctoDash Helper. You can then configure the quick menu
buttons, adding new functionality like homing, cool down and more with
just the click of one touch button. No more thumbing around
with those awful turn knobs. Oh, and remember how I mentioned
that the slicer thumbnails thing would come in handy pretty soon? Well, you can actually get them to display
right on the touchscreen with OctoDash. Enjoy! All right, let's get
a little more advance. You've probably seen a lot of those
smooth time lapses where the print seems to magically grow out of the bed
with the print head out of the way. Now this isn't possible with the
default built-in timelapse functionality that ships with OctoPrint, so you'll
need to download Octolapse for that. Octolapse works by moving the print head
out of the way at the end of each layer so that a photo can be taken of the
print progress without any obstructions. Now Michael Laws over at Teaching Tech
has done a great tutorial on how to use and configure it, and you should
definitely check that out because there are a lot of settings that you'll need
to fiddle with if you want to get the absolute best results, both in terms of
not messing up your print quality as you move the print head outta the way, but
also in terms of getting your cameras focus, exposure and so on dialed in. Now, as soon as you start tweaking and
testing your Octolapse settings, you're going to quickly find that you have
a ton of old timelapses accumulating on your storage, taking up space. Personally, I would always forget to
delete these until I had no more storage so I installed Timelapse Purger and
configured it to automatically remove timelapses after a set amount of time. I love automation and the less
silly menial tasks like deleting old files I need to do, the better. Speaking of automation, one of the single
coolest things you can do is connect your OctoPrint installation to other things. That could be Zapier if you use
webhooks to log information in other apps around the web about your prints. You could tweet every time you're
printing something new or make a spreadsheet of your print times or I don't know. You could do a lot of things honestly. Plus, with Home Assistant Discovery, you
can link OctoPrint to your smart home so that you can say, change the color of the
lights in your room when a print is done, or announce print completion on your smart
speaker, or honestly, whatever you want. If you're an automation geek like me,
you'll love seeing your print status right in your smart home dashboard, and
I'm sure that there are a million and one things that you can do with webhooks to
connect your printer and push information to different devices or parts of the web. This is a geeky one, but one that
has saved me a bunch of times because personally, it's a pain in the butt
for me to connect the right cable to my printer, take my laptop over there,
juggle it, find the right app to update the firmware, and blah, blah, blah. Fortunately, with Firmware Updater for
OctoPrint, you can use your Raspberry Pi or computer or whatever is running
OctoPrint for you, as the computer that actually updates your printer's firmware. And since they're already plugged
in, you don't need to do any wiring. Just upload the new firmware,
configure the settings, and. boom. Off you go. So there you have it. My top 14 must have OctoPrint plug-ins. If you like this video, please leave
a comment and smash the like button because it really does make a difference. If you're not already subscribed and
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