Raspberry Pi OS has the rpi-imager, this tool lets select and create a SDcard image having Octoprint and Raspberry PI OS already installed. Just select it and insert a SDcard, it downloads the image and lets to select username and password (take care about keyboard layout) programs it to the SDcard.

Use keyboard and screen and sudo raspi-config to setup all that is required as keyboard layout and network. For the network select networkmanager and then exit raspi-config. The start sudo nmtui and give a static/manual IP4 network address.

Octoprint is a python application that can run on any Linux system. This way also the newest Raspberry PI OS versions can be used and regular updates to the Linux system can be done without fear to end up in a desaster.

It is designed to run in a virtual python environment to not get in conflict with the systems python setup. https://community.octoprint.org/t/setting-up-octoprint-on-a-raspberry-pi-running-raspberry-pi-os-debian/2337

Create a directory to install the virtual environments sudo mkdir /opt/OctoPrint and go there cd /opt/OctoPrint

Create the virtual environment python3 -m venv venv

source venv/bin/activate to enter the virtual environment

pip install --upgrade pip wheel to update pip and wheel

pip install octoprint to install it

OctoPrint is not designed to run as root. Login as user that will use OctoPrint in the future, start it inside the virtual environment /opt/OctoPrint/venv/bin/octoprint serve Octoprint starts its wizard and creates the directory /home/<user>/.octoprint where all its configuration goes.

Or as daemon /opt/OctoPrint/venv/bin/octoprint daemon start with /tmp/octoprint.pid the process id

Open it at the local machine with the default port 5000 http://127.0.0.1:5000 or some other machine http://<ip or hostname>:5000

Check at https://github.com/OctoPrint/OctoPrint the file README.md for more options

A systemd service can be created to have it automatically started:

sudo touch /etc/systemd/system/octoprint.service

And add:

[Unit]
Description=The snappy web interface for your 3D printer
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Environment="LC_ALL=C.UTF-8"
Environment="LANG=C.UTF-8"
Type=exec
User=<Username>
ExecStart=/opt/OctoPrint/venv/bin/octoprint serve

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

sudo systemctl --user daemon-reload to make the system aware of it

sudo systemctl start octoprint to have it started

sudo systemctl status octoprint to see if it is happy

sudo systemctl enable octoprint to have automatically started on next boot

sudo systemctl restart octoprint restarts it

Use a UVC (USB Video Class) camera, others might not be supported. Endoscope cameras can: easily be attached, are small, come with flexible goose-neck cables (hopefully not too long) and have an integrated illumination.

Figure 3.2. Webcam

The web cam might run out of the box with OctoPI.

When setting up OctoPrint as application then camera-streamer might be missing.

Install an test camera-streamer first without OctoPrint than add it to OctoPrint.

ExecStart=/usr/bin/camera-streamer --camera-path=/dev/video0 --camera-format=MJPG --camera-width=640 --camera-height=480 --camera-fps=30 --http-listen=0.0.0.0

Once octoprint is accessed using its ip address in the browser, a printer profile should be added and set as default containing the printer settings. If auto connect to the printer fails, the appropriate port /dev/ttyACM0 for the raspberry and the correct baudrate as 115200 should be set. Linux generally struggles with higher baud rates since those are out of the specs for physical com ports.

To get the printer settings check the marlin config file ./Marlin/Configuration.h for EXTRUDERS, BAUDRATE, DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE, INVERT_X_DIR, INVERT_Y_DIR, INVERT_Z_DIR (watch out for the units mm/s and mm/min)

Since it is open source it belongs to a community and has lots of addons and plug-ins. Registered plug-ins can directly be installed using the web interface. Some of the useful plugins are:

Octoprint supports also slicing stl files into gcodes. However since slicing is one of the most important tasks in 3d printing an external slicer as slic3r that allows to observe the slicing results is recommended.

Slicers as sclic3r allow directly upload gcode files to octoprint. For this an application key needs to be created in Octoprint and then this application key (not the application identifier) must be entered to the slicer.

Figure 3.3. Gcode Viewer

More important than to see via web cam how nice it looks is is to observe a disaster and stop printing.

Figure 3.4. Disaster

The wizard can be started by ssh <username>@<ip address> and editing ~/.octoprint/config.yaml

firstRun: true

Since Octoprint is a web server it can also be accessed from the Internet. Obviously for this case it has to be configured (Access Control) to requiring a login to avoid that every body on the web can print. For most private people the router might be the only device having an Internet address. Therefore the router needs to configured to do port 80 forwarding for a web server. Then it already works, however the numeric IP address (as shown in the routers menu) that might change from time to time must be inserted. To avoid this, a dynamic DNS server can be setup (as from https://www.changeip.com) in the router so finally Octoprint and the printer can be seen under a address