Raspberry Pi based electronics ideas

While I'm going the Beaglebone Black route, my end objective is a stand-alone 3D Printer system. The $45 BBB with a WiFi connection, the Printer Cape, and a 4.3" TFT LCD touch display, will fit in the space of my present SmoothieBoard controller. Initially I will use the WiFi link to import G Code files, but I hope later to do the STL file to G Code conversion on board. No PC required.

The two on-board PRU processors solve the problem of doing real time with most of the code running on a Linux operating system.

John

Ah, I see it's not so RAMPS-friendly, after all. As for the cost, well I assume with Pi you would use it to gain all the premium features like a touch LCD display, custom Pronterface, wireless and network printing, onboard slicing, etc., and then, since you have some bandwidth, take over many of the duties typically performed by RepRap firmware and drive RAMPS directly, free of Arduino. But you are quite right, especially if you're making your own boards the low cost and convenient encapsulation of Arduino-based controllers are hard to beat.

I have my Raspberry Pi Running my Printer.

I have a python script polling a folder on the Rasppi for gcode files, I then have another app on my laptops than drop the gcode files to a UNC path on the raspberry. This means all the gcode processing and slicing is performed on the laptops/computers and then the actual printing and monitoring of the print is offloaded to the Pi.

The python script also emails when the job is complete and takes pictures of the print on the attached webcam.

If anyone is interested let me know and I'll post up the Pi configuration and scripts.

---

-----------------

www.ur3d.ie
www.keschka.co.uk

A basic problem in porting Arduino 3D printer code to a processor running a Linux operating system, is how to establish a non-blocking serial communication between G code reading software and the low level code that parses the G code to drive the motors and extruder heaters.

ur3dchef - can you explain how you achieved non-blocking serial communication?

John

Ah sorry, maybe I should be more precise. Its nothing special. I plugged the reprap melzi and the pi and it prints using the printcore.

The python script just sends the gcode to the melzi via usb!

There's also OctoPrint if you're just looking to put a network interface on an existing printer with serial support. I've connected mine directly (with level-shifting) from RAMPS 1.4 to the RaspberryPi UART. Works great from multiple machines at the same time, with temperature graphs, gcode visualization, progress reports, webcam recording/timelapse, file storage and upload. Really great stuff.

I actually modified the STL exporter for SketchUp so it can not just export STL but slice and upload (HTTP POST) to the printer all with one click.

Next on my todo list is to have the ability to flash RAMPS firmware from the Pi without a USB cable at 4 MHz.