I’m a huge fan of octoprint on raspberry pi. I’m not a huge fan of raspberry pi lately. I’ve heard of le potato and orange pi. Some searching shows that people have done it on both of those.
Does anyone have any experience running it on a small board computer other than raspi?
You must log in or register to comment.
I run OctoPrint in a docker container on my home server. They have an official docker image available. And they also have a docker-compose.yaml file available.
I’m quite happy with the setup. The server is more stable (for me) than a small board computer. I have the whole setup on a UPS. Management is dead simple. The only caveat is that the server and printer need to be fairly close to each other for the USB connection. In my setup that was already a given, they sit less than a foot apart because of where I wanted them.
I have wanted to try out Klipper , and may well do that in docker as well, but my printer is a proprietary nightmare and Klipper isn’t currently an option.
I want to do this myself (to both free up my pi and not have to deal with underpower warnings) but my printer is a bit further away. I’ve had my eye on those USB via UTP devices for a while but a cursory search seems to imply there’d be timing issues.
Ive been running octoprint on an android phone reliably for a bit now.
The camera didn’t work perfectly for a reason I forget now though, so I use another ipcamera to watch the print
To answer the direct question - no
I do have some thoughts on moving away from the Pi though - warning, heavy personal bias ahead…
If you’re looking at moving away from the Pi I would just suggest a low power x86 box, like a Nuc or some Intel N100 low-power tiny PC.
There is a caveat though - it looks like the OctoPi project only provides OS builds for the Pi, so if you change systems it looks like you’ll need to install OctoPrint manually, and port over your config somehow.
On ebay you can get second-hand NUCs, 6th gen and up, for practically peanuts. The cheaper quad core celeron nucs (i.e. J3455) are roughly equivalent to the 3rd and 4th gen dual-core i5s (3777u, 3230m etc) performance wise, but have an updated QuickSync encoder and support accelerated 4K video encoding/playback, handy if you want to capture timelapses of your prints or just view them live. They also consume 1/3rd of the power at around 10 watts under the same workload.
ARM support for other vendors can be pretty flaky, sometimes even non existent. While you could pick an Orange Pi, and go with a modern community-supported distro like Armbian, it isn’t a turnkey experience like the Pi. There is much less documentation, and still some very early boards floating around with hardware defects and overheating issues (posing a fire risk in the worst case, the OPi Zero being the most egregious - literally melting the optional enclosure and killing the NIC). Some research before buying will let you know most of what you need to know - check around the forums for any common issues and dealbreakers, as well as the manufacturer’s site to get an idea of available support.
If you want to get an idea of the alternatives you could check out Jeff Geerling’s youtube channel, he covers the Pi and occasionally videos on other alternatives, as well as issues he’s had with them and support. I’ll try and link some below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KghZIgkKZcs
Check the comments on that one for a quick synopsis, as the video is quite long…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjzvh-bfV-E
This video pretty much just echoes my current perspective
Just curious what your issue with raspberry pi is?
There was a period where they were hard to get. Then they strayed from their roots about being affordable, simple computer. The mission as it started isn’t what they do anymore. It’s lost its luster.
There aren’t any alternatives that follow the RPi’s original mission, they’re all for-profit. And I’m not sure you’ll find a more affordable board than the $15 Pi Zero 2.
