Having ordered my first 3D printer, I am giddy and preparing various things.

I have installed Octoprint on my home server as a Docker container, but when running it, it seems that it wants to have a serial connection to a printer. Octoprint expects to be running on a Raspberry that is connected via its serial interface.

What am I missing?

The printer I ordered (Prusa Mini) comes with a wifi dongle, so I guess there will be a way to reach it over the network. But that does not automagically mean Octoprint can work with it.

  • lucullusEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I guess you have some kind of linux based system of your home server. The USB connection to the printer will create a Serial Interface in your system under /dev. How it is called depends on the USB chip used in your printer, but often this is something like ttyUSB0.

    So when connecting the printer you get the device file /dev/ttyUSB0 (or similar) on your home server (yes, the Serial interface is just a special file on that level). You can now mount this device file into the docker container like any other hostfile via the volume option.

    Like docker run -v /dev/ttyUSB0:/dev/ttyUSB0 octoprint or by using the volumes key for your octoprint service in the docker-compose file, providing the same string as in the docker run command.

    I think that should work, though I haven’t tested it.