Setting up your OctoPi Kit

Updated 22 November 2018

Sooctoprint-case you have just received your OctoPi kit and you are looking to get it up and running. All you need to do is grab out all the parts you received and around 20 minutes of time.

To connect your OctoPi to the network you need to decide what network interface you will use. If you are using an Ethernet connection skip that step entirely and move on to Step 2: Physical Setup.

Step 1: Network Configuration (Wifi Specific)

This section will instruct you how to configure the wireless connection for your OctoPi server on a Windows PC. Note that this only applies if you're intending on using a wireless connection to monitor prints. If you're using a regular Wired ethernet connection, you can simply ignore this part.

  1. Insert your OctoPi SD card into your PC and navigate to the root directory. Once there find the file called “Octoprint-network.txt”. This is the file that we need to edit for connectivity.
  2. Right-click it then selects the “Open with” option. Find WordPad (any text editor) in the following list and use that program to open this file.
  3. In this file, you will see a bunch of lines commented with # symbols. Find the pictured (below) section and delete the single # at the beginning of each line (highlighted in red) and enter your wireless network SSID (the Name of your home network) and WPA key (WiFi Password) to the relevant sections (highlighted in yellow). Don’t delete the quotations though. When you are done, save the file and overwrite the existing document.
  4. These values are now used to authenticate your Pi to your wireless network. Now your Pi is configured for the network!

wirelessconfigoctopi

Step 2: Physical Setup

Now that your SD card is set up for a network connection, you should be able to boot your Raspberry Pi with the OctoPi OS and launch into OctoPrint. Lets take a look at that process below.

  1. Insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi's SD card slot
  2. Insert the Raspberry Pi into the included case
  3. Connect your 3D printer via USB
  4. OPTIONAL: Connect your ethernet cable (see step 1)
  5. Plug in the power connector to the micro-USB port on the Pi

You should see both green and red LED activity as the Pi boots up. Essentially, the Pi is going through the typical boot up sequence you see on Linux devices (lines of white terminal text scrolling quickly through on a black screen).

Step 3: Software Setup

Now that your OctoPi is connected, powered and networked in, you need to connect to it via your PC! The best (and easiest) way to do so is by installing Bonjour Print services. You can download that one for windows here. It will quite simply allow you to connect to your OctoPi using it's hostname, rather than a specific IP address. Download and install it now.

Now, you can simply log onto your OctoPrint server by typing:

octopi.local/

Into the URL bar of your browser and hit enter. Alternatively, if you want a command line interface to your OctoPi you could connect to this hostname using PuTTY or something similar. For reference, the default username and password for the OctoPi distro is:

Username: pi

Password: raspberry

That’s all there is to it, browse through your Octoprint interface and familiarise yourself with the different menus and settings. Your camera stream should be visible from the Control Tab. You can now:

  • Remotely print models 
  • View real-time illustrations of G-Code with the G-Code Viewer
  • See temperature graphs of hotend and bed temperatures
  • Setup cool looking time lapses for longer prints
  • View a stream of the print remotely

For an in-depth guide on using OctoPrint (including some of the above steps) check out our Remote 3D Printing with OctoPrint guide.

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