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As it happens I just got my very basic printer working after breaking it a year ago (fixed it in an afternoon, spent a year reaching that afternoon), and I've b

by jtode 4y ago

As it happens I just got my very basic printer working after breaking it a year ago (fixed it in an afternoon, spent a year reaching that afternoon), and I've been learning all about this. Fast answer: yes, you can use a Pi, most often running OctoPi, but only a Pi3 at least is fast enough - with a 2 or some Zero models, it will be unable to keep up with faster prints and possibly wreck em. There's a newer, better firmware which I'm about to install on my printer called Klipper, which replaces the more typical Marlin that you find on most entry-level printers, and it depends on a Pi running alongside the printer's microcontroller. For that, it apparently is a huge boost in both speed and quality, so I'm checking it out.

steve_adams_86 4y ago
Nice, thanks. I should dig into this stuff one day. I’ve only got a Zero W handy so I can’t try octoprint, but maybe when it’s possible to buy a pi again I’ll try this stuff out. It’s so cool that tiny little microcontrollers can handle prints without much trouble (though you can get stuttering if they can’t hold enough instructions at once), but while a Pi, despite being far more powerful, can become unreliable and ruin prints. Given that’s likely because it’s talking over a network, handling a camera feed, running an operating system, etc. I just find it so cool how useful and capable microcontrollers can be in the right settings.
- johnwalkr 4y ago
  Not just that it's doing more. A small microcontroller will run in realtime with completely repeatable and testable operation, whereas a pi running linux cannot run a program like this. Even though I claim pi is the de facto standard for getting started, a microcontroller controlling the stepper motors is a technically improved solution. You will probably be interested to check out the beaglebone series of boards. They are less of a de facto standard but they are popular enough. Their CPUs have two 200Mhz 32bit microcontroller cores running in realtime. They can directly share the same memory as the ARM cores so you can have the best of both worlds on one computer.
  - steve_adams_86 4y ago
    I've been interested in the Beaglebones. They seem much better suited to the types of things I build, and while they aren't super affordable, they're much cheaper than a Pi right now. Do you know of any obvious drawbacks with beagles? I can imagine the community is smaller, so there would be fewer peripherals and libraries to choose from. Generally speaking I don't really need that, though. Sometimes off-the-shelf solutions are even unappealing because I enjoy learning, or I don't want to hit edge-cases where it doesn't quite fit my use case.
    - johnwalkr 4y ago
      You hit the nail on the head. The community and number of useful repositories is smaller. But certainly large enough that you won't be stuck. Aside from that, they don't have MIPI camera interfaces so for anything image related you are limited to USB cameras.

by jtode 4y ago

steve_adams_86 4y ago

Nice, thanks. I should dig into this stuff one day. I’ve only got a Zero W handy so I can’t try octoprint, but maybe when it’s possible to buy a pi again I’ll try this stuff out. It’s so cool that tiny little microcontrollers can handle prints without much trouble (though you can get stuttering if they can’t hold enough instructions at once), but while a Pi, despite being far more powerful, can become unreliable and ruin prints. Given that’s likely because it’s talking over a network, handling a camera feed, running an operating system, etc. I just find it so cool how useful and capable microcontrollers can be in the right settings.

johnwalkr 4y ago
Not just that it's doing more. A small microcontroller will run in realtime with completely repeatable and testable operation, whereas a pi running linux cannot run a program like this. Even though I claim pi is the de facto standard for getting started, a microcontroller controlling the stepper motors is a technically improved solution. You will probably be interested to check out the beaglebone series of boards. They are less of a de facto standard but they are popular enough. Their CPUs have two 200Mhz 32bit microcontroller cores running in realtime. They can directly share the same memory as the ARM cores so you can have the best of both worlds on one computer.
- steve_adams_86 4y ago
  I've been interested in the Beaglebones. They seem much better suited to the types of things I build, and while they aren't super affordable, they're much cheaper than a Pi right now. Do you know of any obvious drawbacks with beagles? I can imagine the community is smaller, so there would be fewer peripherals and libraries to choose from. Generally speaking I don't really need that, though. Sometimes off-the-shelf solutions are even unappealing because I enjoy learning, or I don't want to hit edge-cases where it doesn't quite fit my use case.
  - johnwalkr 4y ago
    You hit the nail on the head. The community and number of useful repositories is smaller. But certainly large enough that you won't be stuck. Aside from that, they don't have MIPI camera interfaces so for anything image related you are limited to USB cameras.