I think they handled the python upgrade professionally, the author even went and fixed some of the communities more popular plugins to be python 3 compatible. When the python 3 update didn’t work for me, the rollback scripts worked great and a few months later I just upgraded to python 3.
All in all the main maintainer, which is working full time on it, is communicating well with the community. The iteration cycle has become faster during this last year, and updates seem to be rather stable.
Regarding the performance killing plugins, never had a problem on a RPi 4. What are you using?
OctoPrint only has a single main developer. They also spend a lot of time triaging bugs (https://github.com/OctoPrint/OctoPrint/issues). I'm sure they'd appreciate any help they can get.
Idk what you mean about plugins and performance. Yes, the UI and startup get slower, but print performance? I ran it on an OrangePi Zero (== one of the jankiest SBCs out there) with a bunch of plugins and one webcam without a single OctoPrint-related failure for more than half a year. I ended up switching to something powerful only because of power supply issues (OrangePi are even more voltage-sensitive than RaspPi).
I agree, OctoPrint is very slow to load with the default settings. I disabled these plugins and now it loads very quickly:
- Action Command Notification Support
- Action Command Prompt Support
- Announcements Plugin
- Anonymous Usage Tracking
- Discovery
- Error tracking
- File Check
- Firmware check
- Logging
- Pi Support Plugin
No app is a feature for me. It's a fairly big ask for a free open source project to navigate the Google Play and Apple stores too, I feel app stores have no place in the open source ecosystem. I wouldn't wish that headache on any project trying to provide something for free.
Duet controllers are another good option of OctoPrint doesn't appeal. Having everything integrated into one board makes a lot of things easier, and from a safety perspective it feels a lot more trustworthy than random cloned driver boards.
I have a 3D printer, and I don't get it at all. I have yet to need to print something remotely, and can't think of a scenario in which I would want to.
I guess if you have reason to want process pictures?
My workflow of slicing and printing is totally separated. I do my slicing on my main computer and save the stl to a network drive with organized folders for filament types and dates. Then I can print whenever I want from anywhere through octoprint. That's almost always just on my phone or laptop or main computer, but it's nice being able to access it remotely and I don't need to bother with anything but an rpi in the room with the printer. I think octoprint could be so much better but for how easy it is to setup and configure I'd choose it again today
I like being untethered from my PC or SD card. Drag and drop the gcode into the web UI and click print. My printer sits in the room adjacent to my office so then I can monitor it remotely using phone apps (OctoPrint provides a mjpeg stream).
Edit: plus visualization for auto-bed leveling is amazing trying to fine tune the printer bed.
My first printer was an Anet A8, which lived in the garage due to the noise. I used Octoprint with a webcam to keep an eye on progress, both to abort bad prints and to know when it was done.
I now have a Prusa Mini, which is quiet and small enough to live in a cupboard in my office. It's far more reliable and the print time estimate is so accurate that I don't need Octoprint any more. It also has a USB port instead of SD card, so walking across my office with a USB stick is a viable alternative to sending jobs directly from my desktop browser.
So I guess it depends on your printer - if it's noisy, large, unreliable or you have lots of them, Octoprint is a godsend.
I don't use OctoPrint or similar yet, but it's been on my to-do list since before I got my printer. (Prusa mini.)
It depends what you envisage by 'remotely', I don't imagine ever starting a print while not at home, but I do want to sit at my computer, slice, and send straight to the printer; without faffing about with a USB stick.
two reasons for me; these apply to any remote administration suite for printing and not just octoprint.
1) It isn't pleasant to be near many industrial machines. Chemical vapor/off-gassing can be a real problem, so on top of the usually loud metal-component motion systems/gantries you have loud evacuation/exhaust fans. One place to deal with webcams/remote features on many machines at once is convenient.
2) Real time notifications create less machine downtime. A thermistor failed so a machine stopped mid-print? This time can be salvaged by a notification to browser or mobile for quick repair rather than discovering the issue by returning to the machine at the supposed end-time and being greeted with a non-finished print.
I'm not who you asked, but since i'm preaching about it elsewhere anyway :
input shaping allows one to get rid of mechanical resonances without re-engineering the motion system on a printer. It's pretty unique to klipper -- but it's one of those features that I suspect is brilliant enough to where the other groups who develop such software will probably follow-up with their own variations.
Not sure, I haven't been following Prusa too much lately.
I've spoken to a few people on klipper who are inputing the variables for compensation in directly from an attached accelerometer on the printer frame. That'd be the way i'd want to go rather than taking a pair of calipers to the ringing artifacts on the print itself.
- Terribly slow startup and load times.
- no support for mobile devices just with some app.
- While it can do lots of things with plugins they tend to kill performance which might cause artifacts on the print.
- slow on updates, they ware on Python 2.x until this year.
I'm currently migrating to mainsail (https://github.com/meteyou/mainsail), which looks much better.