Why You Should Use OctoPrint - OctoPrint Introduction

in this video I'll talk about why octoprint is the perfect solution to control your 3d printer from anywhere and we're starting right now I know my name is Daniel welcome to the crosslink channel I would like to help you be more successful with 3d printing if you hear for the first time subscribe and hit the bell notification so you don't miss anything running a 3d printer unsupervised can be a little scary especially if you let it run overnight or when you're not in the house in general the best is of course not to leave the printer alone but even if you're in the house it's just inconvenient if you have the printer in a distant room and you're working in another part of the house and just want to start a print or I want to know how long it's going to take to be finished there comes octoprint to supervise and remotely control your printer form basically anywhere octoprint is a software application that runs on a computer it could be a normal PC or just a Raspberry Pi that's what I prefer and that computer gets connected to your 3d printer using a USB cable octoprint then can send commands over that cable to your printer usually these commands are generated by your slicer software and get saved to a so called g-code file basically that's a huge text file with a lot of lines in it and each line is a command that the printer uses to move its motors extrude filament heat up the nozzle printing what it should be printing instead of putting this file on an SD card as you usually would do and then I sewed it into the printer to execute the commands in these files you can upload them to the octoprint software why the web interface and then it will transfer all these commands over to the printer using that USB cable and while that is happening you can be in a totally different location as long as you have a network connection to the computer that is running octoprint I can be in my office designing a 3d model then slicing it into cura and from there I can directly send it to my printer wire octoprint so I don't have to go down to the basement to start the print I personally use octoprint since many years and I'm super happy with it for me it makes any printer I have so much more powerful that even a super cheap and the three was the default main word we get features that even a five thousand dollar printer sometimes doesn't offer but there is even more features available to extend octoprint in so many ways through so-called plugins these plugins can for example enable auto print to turn on the power for your 3d printer using these super cheap son of power plugs or you can enable a plugin like the spaghetti detective that analyzes the images from a webcam looking at your 3d printers print surface if there might be an issue with the print going on like stringing or the print detaching from the print surface and it will notify you and can even stop your printer to prevent damage or waste of material so you see the possibilities are endless but I don't want to overwhelm you already at this point let's first explain the basics and come back to advanced features in another part of this series now let's go a little bit deeper to understand what octoprint actually is under the hood where me we are still scratching the surface here but a few technical details you should know so you can really understand how to use it best the user interface of octoprint is a web application that's also hosted on the same computer what it octoprint core application is running just to clarify this a bit further octoprint is not only the web application that you can use a new browser but there's a second part a server application running in the background that is independent from the web application so it's constantly running even when you don't have the web app open in your browser this server application does all the heavy lifting of controlling your printer sending all the commands and collecting the results that your printer sends back the web application is only the original interface that uses the data from that background application to show it to you and to offer you something to interact with internally it's always talking to that background application and the web app is not the only way how you can connect and monitor what's going on with your 3d printer there is a large number of mobile apps for iOS and Android which can connect to your octoprint server each of them looks a bit different some of them are free some of them cost money and I will do another separate video about mobile apps for octoprint very soon so make sure you are subscribe and half your Bell notifications enable so you don't miss that now from a technical point of view the connection to octoprint from a mobile device or any other computer could also be done directly over the Internet but you should never allow a connection to your printer from the internet directly by using a so called port forwarding in your internet router even it sounds tempting and simple this is really the worst and most insecure way how to do this and I will show you different solutions how to safely connect octoprint over the Internet in a follow-up video of this series you see there's so many great things about octoprint to discover and this was just the beginning to mainly get you ramped up a but a why and a bit about the how I also like to take the opportunity to tell you a bit about the developer behind octoprint Gina hi scare Gina has started the octoprint project by her own and it's still the lead developer behind it in the meanwhile there is a great community around octoprint that helps to test and bug fix octoprint as well as a large number of developers that create plugins to extend the functionality of octoprint if you're getting into using octoprint with your printer please consider supporting Gina on her patreon page or the other message she offers on a home page I put those links in the description I know it's free software but the person behind it is doing this full-time and we are often taking this effort for granted but it's not Gina also does frequent live streams to hang out with her supporters which I also really like so there is also something in for you beyond just using the software if you become a supporter the next videos in the series will show you how to install octo print on a Raspberry Pi to get you started quickly and from there we will discover how to get all the initial settings done how to use it securely access it from anywhere in the world and then discover advanced features and plug step-by-step I'm really super excited to create this series of octoprint focused videos for you if you have suggestions what I should talk about in future videos please use the comment section down below now if you like this video please do me a favor I appreciate if you hit the like button or subscribe to my channel but the real way how you can support me is go watch some of my other videos that I have linked for you in these two cards here thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

Channel: Crosslink

Views: 122,288

Keywords: crosslink, 3dprinting, 3dprinter, additivemanufacturing, 3d printer, howto, tutorial, daniel kreuzhofer, octoprint ender 3, octoprint raspberry pi 4, octoprint anet a8, octopi, octolapse, spaghetti detective, spaghetti detective octoprint, octoprint

Id: W99SqwfY8b4

Length: 7min 22sec (442 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/sandwich6359]

It makes life so so so much easier. Idk how I loved without it.

[u/ratbikerich]

Very cool. Looks like exactly what I have been looking for.

[u/GooberGuz]

I finally got mine all setup last night - today I added a web camera - planning to do some prints with tune laps!! I’m pretty pumped about it.

[u/JJM-9]

I packed a RGBW stripe at the Top of my printer, which is connected to a Shelly RGBW2 Controller. Stripe geht’s turned on via MQTT when Print starts and gets turned of when print is done. So I can monitor the progress day and Night via Webcam.