Remote Touch Screen control of main Repetier Server.
I did a quick search but didn't find quite what I was looking for.
I have a Linux PC on my workbench that runs the server for two printers. I usually log into the web gui from my desk across the workshop or on the server PC or on other PC's in the house. Works great!
Though I was wondering if there is a way to say use a pi zero w (which I seem to have an abundance of at them moment
) to run the Raspberry Pi image and control my main server with the touch screen on the pi zero. It would be nice to setup a little touch screen in a convenient location in the workshop and use the rather handy interface of the pi image. Suuure, I GUESS I could just run a webpage on a touch screen, but that just seems like a "lazy hack", lol.
I REALLY like the multi-printer control of Repetier versus having a bunch of pi's or pc's running octoprint. Less power plugs used, less electricity, less IP's on the network, less bandwidth on the network and fewer machines to maintain! Lately I've been consolidating the amount of PC's and Servers I have running in the shop in order to cutdown the aforementioned issues. More isn't always better.
I'm assuming with the 5 installs and what I have seen in the gui, I can install a few servers then link them on the main to distribute processing. All I have to do is just install, then add the links to the main server or are there other things to do. Just seems too easy, kind of unusual these days, lol. If it IS that easy, COOL!
I've got a few more days on my free trial and I hope to purchase the full pro version either tomorrow or next week. Any "Black Friday" deals coming up for US users? The euro to dollar exchange kinda blows lately, gotta love our new administration!
One other thing, is there a demo of the server monitor? Since I don't officially have the pro version yet I can't try out the server monitor.
I have a Linux PC on my workbench that runs the server for two printers. I usually log into the web gui from my desk across the workshop or on the server PC or on other PC's in the house. Works great!
Though I was wondering if there is a way to say use a pi zero w (which I seem to have an abundance of at them moment
) to run the Raspberry Pi image and control my main server with the touch screen on the pi zero. It would be nice to setup a little touch screen in a convenient location in the workshop and use the rather handy interface of the pi image. Suuure, I GUESS I could just run a webpage on a touch screen, but that just seems like a "lazy hack", lol.I REALLY like the multi-printer control of Repetier versus having a bunch of pi's or pc's running octoprint. Less power plugs used, less electricity, less IP's on the network, less bandwidth on the network and fewer machines to maintain! Lately I've been consolidating the amount of PC's and Servers I have running in the shop in order to cutdown the aforementioned issues. More isn't always better.
I'm assuming with the 5 installs and what I have seen in the gui, I can install a few servers then link them on the main to distribute processing. All I have to do is just install, then add the links to the main server or are there other things to do. Just seems too easy, kind of unusual these days, lol. If it IS that easy, COOL!
I've got a few more days on my free trial and I hope to purchase the full pro version either tomorrow or next week. Any "Black Friday" deals coming up for US users? The euro to dollar exchange kinda blows lately, gotta love our new administration!
One other thing, is there a demo of the server monitor? Since I don't officially have the pro version yet I can't try out the server monitor.
Comments
https://forum.repetier.com/discussion/9033/remote-touchscreen#latest
Like I mentioned I am now running server on a linux machine and it is kicking butt!
So on your previous comment I would set up something like haproxy to allow the pi to control the main server, could you elaborate a bit?
If you want to use touch screen on different machine you can edit /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default on pi.
These lines:
prevent it from working remotely when you access via port 80. This is a security issue - when you remove it anyone in intranet can use frontend without authorization (except if pins are enabled). No real issue in private networks.
I installed Server Monitor and so far it looks a lot like the Web GUI with a few more neat features, love the backup feature!!!
The main Repetier Server runs on an 8th gen i7 Intel NUC with 64GB RAM with a standard Intel GPU running Kubuntu 21.10.
I also installed three more instances; on a 6th Gen i7 Asus with 64GB RAM running Debian 10 and OMV5, 10th Gen i7 Intel NUC with 64GB RAM running Kubuntu 21.10 and on my 10th Gen i9 with 128GB RAM running Windows 11.
The Asus has 2 GeForce GTX1080 GPUs with 8GB DDR ea in SLI , the NUC has a standard Intel GPU and the Windows machine has 2 RTX2080 Super GPUs with 12GB DDR ea in SLI. Not sure if the GPUs come into play with processing. The Asus has 8 cores, the NUC has 12 cores and the i9 has 28 cores.
Now if I am understanding correctly all I do is add the IP's and API's of the secondary machines and the main server off loads processing as needed to the others. No other config is necessary? BTW, this is a COOL feature that sets Repetier apart from other options! As I get more addicted to 3D printing
I am REALLY digging the Repetier software and your work. I've been using OctoPrint since I started 3D printing last fall. It has done well up to now. The main drawback was the single instance per printer. BUT, you COULD do a multi instance, some have reported up to 5 printers on one Pi4. BUT, it is NOT officially supported and does have its drawbacks, especially with printers from the same vendor that don't have serial numbers. Like the Enders and it's clones. I have two Enders (3 Max and 3v2) and an Elegoo Neptune which is essentially a dual extruder Ender 3 clone. NONE of them have serials and the vendor id and product id are all identical. I had to work some /etc/udev magic to distinguish them. But that was NOT without it's issues. If one printer hiccupped or had a power issue it most likely interrupted the others too. Lots of lost prints. I did try Repetier a while back but was still having issues. I think this was more with the linux configs and some poor udev work on my part and maybe the quality of the PC I was trying at the time. (An ancient HP 2nd Gen i5 with 8GB RAM and only USB 1.1 or 2.0 ports.) Now that I have Repetier running on the newer i7 NUC with USB 3.0 I am having MUCH more success.
I passed my Ender 3v2 down to my Wife for her business. She is currently using OctoPrint since that is what she is familiar with and is really JUST starting out with 3D printing. She has been doing some basic 3D Design with 3DS Max since about 2010. She's more of a 2D Photoshop Wiz. She is really getting into cold cast epoxy resin casting (coasters, trinket boxes, incense holders, etc) and is looking at 3D printing objects that she can embed in the resin. She also does custom bamboo cutting boards laser engraved with our GlowForge. The current boards she is purchasing don't have rubber feet. She is looking at using TPU to print feet and corner bumpers for dual sided boards. Also she needs lower profile feet for her coaster sets. The current ones from the local hardware store are too thick and only allow three of the four coasters in the set to fit in the holder. I tested some thinner TPU feet and she is positive about those results. Hence the passing down the Ender 3v2. OK, to make a long story short, If she decides to eventually move to Repetier and maybe add a mini direct drive printer for dedicated TPU printing, can I link them to my current main Server with longer active USB extension cables? Her office is just on the other side of the wall of my workshop (a converted 2 car garage) approximately 20 to 30 feet from where I have my NUC. Would this be okay or could I see some comm issues, maybe timeouts, or should she just run a server on a pi for her printers?
This also begs the question, just how many printers can Repetier Server support? Is the limit just essentially based on the hardware running the server? Add more printers so go from a 64GB NUC to a beefier PC with more RAM?
What needs CPU und eventually RAM is rendering G-Code images or STL files in projects, making timelapse videos. These are the parts that can be offloaded to your big master server instance. For this the pi must have it it connectivity activated and the offloading enabled.
The weak point of pi is sd cards dieing much faster then ssd drives especially if you do not shutdown before unpowering. So with a gib server always running projects should always go to that instance. Any instance can access them when that server is listed in connectivity. And backups of course help when you refresh a sd card and replay old config/data. Just insert new image, make it connect with network and restore - will even restore old license activation:-)
IF I run a pi it will be to just use the touch interface as a remote control panel. But right now the Web GUI is doing quite well.
I tend to do larger and complex prints so yes the offloading of rendering and timelapses will be good. Some of my prints can be up to 48 hours long.
This also brings up a question, when I slice in Cura I'll get an ETA of say 2 hours, but Repetier reports am ETA MUCH longer, some times two or three times longer. I honestly really haven't paid much attention to the accuracys of either. I just tend to print and forget. Just let the printers do their thing. I'm not doing this professionally so I'm usually not on a time crunch.
ETA mainly depends on calibration of firmware timings and limits. If you print 80mm/s and max speed is 40mm/s set in server we compute with 40mm7s as limit so double time even if printer can do 80 just because you said that is the limit. So check the speeds/accelerations in the general printer configuration tab. There is also a wizard to compute heating/cooling speed which have big impact on time for short prints.
Again AWESOME work and Software!!!
Not with slicer, with firmware settings! Especially max speeds and accelerations have most influence on timing.