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Printer Monitor

wabbitguywabbitguy
in Repetier-Server
Is it possible to run strictly the Repetier Server Monitor app on says something like a Rasp Pi?

The desktop apps are great, it'd be nice to have a simple monitor on a Pi with 5" display (HDMI) for example, where all the printers show and their state/status can be monitored over the network.

Mel

Comments

  • RepetierRepetier
    The Repetier-Server Monitor was written with a bigger monitor in mind. 1024x768 is the minimum I think. Also there are no binaries for linux arm available, only 64 intel linux. So at the moment the answer is no. Maybe in future we will add arm versions for it if electron supports the platform.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    edited October 2019
    Thanks for the quick reply. I'd tried a few of the 64 bit Rasp PI OS's with the Appimage to see if anything would work and nope. So good to know I can toss the pi back in the parts bin.

    Currently I use a print monitor that runs on an ESP8266 with either an OLED or TFT but it can only show one printer instance, whereas with your Printer Monitor it's possible to see all the printers. No control on my monitor of course, strictly for status of the printers.

    A tech question though. How often does Repetier Server Monitor query Repetier Server Pro for information? That would be a good thing to know so I don't overload the Server with info requests...

    For Repetier Server Pro running on the Pi, I have to start the PRUSA i3 MK3S first, then the server. Other way around the PRUSA never finishes starting up. Not sure what Server Pro is doing but during boot up it will cause the PRUSA to reboot 3 or 4 times before the info screen on the PRUSA shows up.

    For the deltas I have connected, I see a reboot on the deltas exactly once and its done.

    Mel
  • RepetierRepetier
    The monitor has a new system that only gets changes from server to reduce traffic and modifications required to a minimum. But of course more printers is more data and modifications. Frequency i do not know at the moment. I think maximum 10 hz if no questions get send. On every response the events get also send. No problem for a regular PC. A pi - I can not say. A pi 4 is also pretty fast so might work up to a number of printers. 

    I have my prusa on the internal serial connector so I can not reset. But never noted this behaviour. Will retest with external serial. Server restarts connect if it does not see the "start" response or any useful communication data after a few seconds.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    As far as I'm aware, with the internal serial connector it works completely different than the USB one. I was going to stick a Pi Zero in my PRUSA but opted for the Pi 4 because it will run all three of my printers via USB.

    I really like the Monitor concept and would like a simple monitor that basically shows what we see on the default Monitor page (summary of the printers). Maybe it'll be my winter project...:-)

    The only thing I'd add to the current Printer Monitor is the ability to reboot or shut the server down from the summary display.

    Mel
  • RepetierRepetier
    Ok tested enabling prusa on usb after server has started. That was no problem. One reset. I had "Port is visible even if firmware is not running" activated, which I developed especially for Prusa where port is visible also printer and firmware are not working. That feature had a problem in the past, but in 0.92.3 it is working fine. Not sure when i fixed it.

    Choosing the pi 4 over pi zero is a good decision. Pi 0 works but is soo slow compared to pi 4.

    For the monitor there is a quite simple solution:
    https://www.repetier-server.com/customizing-printer-frontend/

    You can use our sources and write just a page that accesses all printers data. That solution polls all data of the printers on your pi 4 so all you need to do is write an extra page with overview. Main problem for us is to find a solution working from 3 inch to 7" or even 10" displays. Maybe at some time we also add an info screen for all printers on the device at least for bigger displays. Still have some plans to improve the touch gui.

    Adding a context menu to printer overview in monitor is also something we are thinking about.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    I had the Port Visible unchecked so I've checked that and will retry it. I remember unchecking it with firmware 3.8.0 on the MK3S because of some issue at the time which may or may not have been related. I'm using 3.8.1 now.

    The printer front end link looks interesting but geared more towards the Raspberry PI than the ESP8266 or ESP32's that get the same job done at 1/10th the hassle and cost for me. Rasp Pi doesn't have a decent C++ IDE environment so I favour the ESP's for doing task specific stuff like a simple printer monitor. Hence I plan to use the API to query and a TFT to display.

    I'm use SPI to communicate with an 2.8" TFT for the monitor, small and unobtrusive. I know those work fine together so it'll just be formatting for the display and the API to get the data from the server. Like I said, winter project...:-)

    For controlling and sending print jobs to both my deltas and my PRUSA at the same time, Repetier Server Pro is the best investment I ever made. The others I've tried like Octo and Astro will cause a delta to stutter badly with any curved prints at 45+mm/s speeds and will always take longer to print than the same SD card file, they do work with the PRUSA. Repetier Server on the other hand just works with all three. Excellent software.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    Follow up for the reboots, checking the port active fixes the reboots and stalls. Thanks!

    Mel
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    I just found this today: https://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Printer-Monitor-Wemos-D1-Mini-ESP8266/

    Is there anything similar for Repetier Server? I am now checking the progress via mobile browser, but this would be golden. I liked Octoprint but I bought the RS because it looks better, I liked the features more, and it supports multiple printers out of the box. I have it running on an HP T620 with Linux mint and plan to have 4 printers connected.

    A small display like this cycling automatically and with a button through the running prints would be awesome.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    The person (his handle is QROME) who did the original for Octoprint, also has version 3.0 out for Repetier Server.

    Essentially it allows you to select the printer you want to monitor but only a single printer. It won't rotate through all the printers that Repetier Server has listed/running. But it does work and if you're into coding you can even customize the code to do what you want... I used it for quite a while myself.

    https://github.com/Qrome/printer-monitor/tree/3.0

    Mel
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    Nice find, thanks!
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    I put one together today, it seems to work just fine - I see things on the display and can connect to the web interface, all I need is now to print a box and test it with the server. Looking quickly at the code, I am not really sure how it identifies the printers or which one it will select from the three I have.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    You don't set up which printer you want to display in the code.

    Once you get the server running, you do it in the web interface it when you log onto the monitor to set it up. There's a popup menu that will show all the printers you have defined in Repetier Pro and you select the one you want.

    I've toyed with the idea of having it rotate through all printers and display the ones that are active, but on a single display that got a little messy looking. So it'd be better to have it display up to 4 printers on a larger display for me. Just haven't got around to seeing what modifications I'd have to do to make it do that...

    Mel
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    Mine now says that the printers are offline due to error in parsing. If a reboot does not help, it will need some debugging.
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    Well that's interesting...sounds like the JSON module is having an issue with something...I know I did a bit of debugging on my own and the ESP8266 libraries have changed significantly since the original 2.5.2 version. I'll check my own version and see if I have any issues with newer libraries.

    Mel
  • wabbitguywabbitguy
    I just checked my monitor and I got a parsing error. The problem was that I'd recently had to redo the microSD card install for Repetier Server Pro and that created a new API ID. My monitor was using the old API key so it would connected although I had the correct port (3344), static IP of the server on my network. Once I updated the API key, I used the Test Connection and it was fine.
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    I have the correct API ID, I re-entered it and no change. I can select any printer and save, but still parser error. I had to change the NTP server to time.google.com to male it work, the weather worked straight away. I need to connect to the console if I can see more.
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    It says root size = 0 when I commented out the error handling. When I try the URL http://ip//printer/api/?a=stateList&apikey=xxx, it displays the information in the browser. But the program does not read it for some reason. This is far beyond my skills.
  • RepetierRepetier
    > I have the correct API ID, I re-entered it and no change. I can select any printer and save, but still parser error. 
    What do you mean by select any printer and save? Are we talking about Repetier-Server Monitor or Repetier-Host here? Monitor has no printer selection where you add the server. It always adds all printers.

    > It says root size = 0 when I commented out the error handling. 
    How can you comment out error handling in monitor? You description is quite confusing. Also who says root size = 0?
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    I am sorry, we are talking about the Qrome hardware printer monitor (and its Arduino code). The latest code (3.0) has a section commented out - uncommenting a part of it helped and it now works for me - I uncommented the part that removed the headers from the server response. The issue was not caused by Repetier, that works perfectly (except some things I met lately, I will report them in a separate topic).
  • JaroslavJaroslav
    And I am sorry for hijacking this thread, I somehow thought this was about that Qrome monitor from the beginning.
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