SD Card + ESP8266 = OctoPrint Alternative?
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- Опубликовано: 21 янв 2021
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What if you could combine an SD card with an ESP8266 Wifi module? Well, the idea is that it would give you full remote access to the contents of your SD card - while it's in your 3D printer! Let's find out if that's enough to make it a viable alternative to a full-blown OctoPrint setup.
SD-Wifi on Aliexpress go.toms3d.org/SDWifi
BTT SD Cloud on Aliexpress go.toms3d.org/BTTWifi
Products shown
Prusa MK3 go.toms3d.org/PROOSHAA/
Raspberry Pi for OctoPrint go.toms3d.org/RPi4
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I have no words anymore after watching the intro 😮
You're up next!
@@MadeWithLayers Wait... you're going to shave him?!?! 😯
@@MadeWithLayers Maybe we should start a just giving page for his favourite charity. There's a tenner here to watch a live stream of Stefan getting a buzz cut.
My god what have I just witnessed. Who is this new presenter???
@@shadow7037932 Only the upstairs... we hope...
That surprise DIY haircut was hilarious, and so smoothly transitioned into! 😂 Nice one Tom
Wasn’t a surprise anymore 😬
@@laukan hehe
I wonder how many takes he needed for this to look smooth :D
I wasn't ready for that!
4:44 Epic Linus moment
That reminds me Linus too :DDD
oh my gosh i was thinking the same thing when i saw it and went to comment and saw this! lol!
Thomas Print Tips
What if, it's a new bane of 2021? Linusviridae!
He's out Linus'd Linus
You could try soldering a decent capacitor onto the board: makes esp's a lot more stable from brownouts
Definitely.
100uF is not decent enough? Just asking, seeing the schematics at 4:23. Albeit I would add a 0u1, I don't think anything bigger than 330 or 470uF would be very safe for the 3.3V source.
A 330uf might help
Similar SD wifi cards have been around a while, and are used by digital photographers to save them swapping out the SD cards from their SLRs and to obtain immediate backups as soon as the photo is taken
Yes, and the camera can upload photo's to a PC with a proper driver setup. But it doesn't work the other way around. These wifi-cards are not in any listening mode. Won't work in a printer.
like the new haircut Tom 👌😎 and excellent explanations for the adapter
his old hair was fine...
at least his old hair want unkempt.
I still find it hillarious that Thomas makes advertisements for a coffee brand he and anyone else in Europe can't get. I know, lot's of US Americans are probably watching, but still.
if they'll pay him to make videos I don't care if they only sell to Martians
@@RoamingAdhocrat Good point.
Maybe it's better for us? I surely would have spent money for that. It seems that we have to order our next load at a competitor who will profit that way from their campaign *mmmmhhh, coffee*
Well, i mostly drink tea, so yeah, i don't Care
Btw:
Ich mag deinen Namen 😂
It looks to me like it has the potential to improve a lot with software updates. Maybe it can even buffer data from the point the printed read onwards, so it can keep feeding data to the printer while it writes new data. The cherry on top would be to connect the printer's serial port to the ESP and be able to control it through WiFi.
so i was going to comment "nice quarantine hair tom" and then the video took a weird turn
Tom straight up meltdown like Nick Avocado 😂
This is a very specific filming idea, but it would be neat to grab a cup of coffee at 3:18 right as the ad ends and take a sip. It looked great in my head. Another great video Tom!
They’ve been doing this on Toshiba’s flash air for a while now.
Exactly what I was thinking, I've had a flash air for over a year now
@@PewpewFiah the flash air is more reliable but a pain to set up. Chris Riley has a really good video on how to set it up for a printer. I use one in my F150 in USB port 2 in my Sync module. Hit remote start and transfer music while it’s warming up.
Agreed on this. I have been using a Toshiba FlashAir W-04 for a few years now with very good results. My motivation was to keep the power fault protections of the Prusa that octoprint couldn't provide. This all being said, I have two friends who tried the same card and couldn't get it to work. YMMV.
I've not been able to buy a FlashAir for any reasonable price lately. Seems they are out of production. I think this would be a nice stop-gap solution. Escpecially since you can flash the ESP8266 to add more feature and maybe make it FlashAir compatible.
@@JohanBloemberg I just looked at the going price on Amazon. Wow! I paid much, much less two years ago. At these prices, I might give this kind of hack a try. It should be noted that the Toshiba card performance is much faster than what Thomas is experiencing. I'm happy I got mine before they were discontinued.
Looks like a Toshiba FlashAir but with extra steps (and the FlashAir works flawlessly in my Prusa Machines)
How do you do this? I am wanting to know in case I can't get this card. Thanks
Pop the FlashAir card into an SD card reader in your PC, edit the configuration file in the root of the card with a text editor to add your WiFi details, pop it in the printer, done. Has worked great for me for several years as well.
Yeah, I've spend the whole video trying to figure out how is this different to the FlashAir card I was using for the last two years.
Can confirm that Toshiba WiFi cards are working fine now. There were bugs in older MK3 firmwares though.
I bought 3 ESP8266 last year and they're a lot of fun, but since then Ive literally have had this very similar idea. Great video glad someone did it. Thanks!!
One way I've might have approached this type of device design would have been too use the ESP32 instead, it can support the high speed SD card interface, then emulate the SD storage to the printer over SPI on the ESP. With dual cores, may even be possible to have dedicated threads for SD-to-NAS and the printer-to-SD.
Thanks for converting to "US Floor" numbers... That made me chuckle out loud.
Guy just whips out the buzz cutter and goes to town! Been in love with you and your content since finding it recently. Keep it up!
New haircut looks really good btw! It suits you
I have been using a Toshiba FlashAir card for a couple years on my MK3 and have had no issues. It transfers quite slow but gcode isn't usually large anyway. No issues setting it up or any bugs. You can also upload to it at any time. EDIT: Seems like the FlashAir cards have gotten very expensive. I found a few alternatives but not sure how well they work.
It can actually work very well if you combine it with ESP3D (and probably an ip camera which can be an old smartphone).
Thanks for the review! I ordered such a thing a bit ago (did not arrive yet). I ordered it although I actually have ocoprint running... kind of running... an issue sometimes heard of are buffer underflows which cause the printer sometimes to pause and create blobs in the print. It started occurring for me at some point after octoprint worked flawlessly for many prints. I didn't have time (and mood) for bugfixing yet, so I went back to moving the card between printer and computer.
I was hoping for more speed than you measured. Still it is faster than uploading to SD via octoprint I guess...
It's a novel idea, and a bit more drop-in than Octoprint. But the reason I use Octoprint is for monitoring, progress reports (push notifications), webcam & etc. So doesn't really do the job for me. Would be useful for things like older Sailfish based printers (e.g. Wanhao Duplicator 4), but it's a small used case!
I've been tinkering on something similar with an ESP32, but I quickly decided that rather than intercepting the SD card, I want to connect through serial and use the M20-M30 commands to save files to SD and then print from them from SD. You could already do this with an USB cable (so you can turn off the host computer), the ESP part would just make it wireless and slightly more like a low-budget octoprint alternative, being able to control it remotely and from multiple devices.
Tom, best video ever!!! Started cutting mid sentense. Bravo for shock factor!
Been using a Toshiba FlashAir for years, and it's excellent. Mounts as a drive on my PC, so I can slice straight to it. Even explicitly supported in Prusa FW.
They don't make the FlashAir cards anymore, so supplies will start to run short (...and/or prices will skyrocket)
I've been using a Toshiba FlashAir card in my FlashForge for a few years. It works but it took some light coding but I can add and remove files through a web browser. Pretty sure it was in the $40 dollar range though.
I used to use one of those EZ Share type cards to upload RAW images from my Canon 60D directly to the internet using my cell phone as WIFI. It ate battery but it could still do it reliably. They even had a site to manage the card. This may work better with a different chip and an external antenna depending on the home layout.
For me the only concern is you need to plug on/off the printer manually (or use a smart plug), but could be a in between solution for people that not want to complicate with octoprint, just to move files or start printings remotely like me (my printer is 2 floors above my desktop).
Hi interesting video packed with some useful info, for me the card looks like it will be enough for my needs, so I just ordered one, but a quick question I noticed that with the card plugged into your printer you have the USB cable connected, did you just not remove it after programming or is this needed to power the board? or will it get enough power from just being plugged into the micro SD card slot? thanks in advance Alan
Like the concept of this, and Loving the new hair cut Tom.
One issue I have had with Octopi is that prints from "local" end up with a rough texture due to the serial port bottleneck between the raspberry pi and my printers. Using the Octopi to copy to an SD card is prohibitively slow. Maybe this product could eliminate the worst bit of the Octopi prints, by allowing reasonably quick access to the sd card, and then using octopi to control the print?
I put a Toshiba FlashAir 64GB in my Prusa i3 Mk3, configured it to be a wireless network drive, works great because I never have to take it out of the printer to add/delete/etc. the files on it.
The Prusa does have a FlashAir setting in it's configuration but it can lose track of what files are there when you add/delete some, so my workaround is to make a subdirectory for each project in the root, and in that subdirectory a directory called 'refresh', so I can navigate into 'refresh' then back out again and the file list is fully refreshed.
I couldn't get a smaller sized FlashAir, but the printer has no issues with it formatted to FAT32. With so much extra space I put it to good use by storing a backup of my 3D project files I work on, zipped & split into 1GB file sizes.
Toshiba don't make the FlashAir cards any more.
In fact they spun off their whole solid state division into a new company KIOXIA and they're not making the FlashAir.
The primary market for the cards was killed off by cameras and the like having WiFi added to them.
They're still available in a lot of places, but not long term.
@@_Piers_ Oh no, thanks for the heads-up, I'll grab a couple more whilst they're still available because it's such a useful feature I'm sure I'll need one or two in years to come.
Now I'm wondering if it would be possible to design an adpater with an ESP and an SD slot, that streams the data from a NAS. It would have to simulate a FAT partition and be quite fast. But while printing everything should be sequential access, so it could prefetch data very easily.
I think this solution is handy but I think it really shines for SLA printers. With FDM printers, Octoprint is probably the best way to go because it offers so many features, but Octoprint doesn't typically work for an SLA printer. If this ends up working for my Elegoo Mars SLA printer, then we really have something there.
That thumbnail though...
Tom with short hair + a goatee = Half Life 3 alternative?
He looks 10 years older
I got a Walter White/Heisenberg vibe from it
At first i thought it was the return of techno viking
I was seriously like "The shaggy look works for him" and then.... lol
shaggy hair is usually a little messy and long his was tidy.
I tried something similar a few years ago with a Wi-Fi SD card meant for a camera. I could connect but getting files onto it never really seemed to work. This looks exactly like what I was trying to do (except it works).
Note to self, set up octorprint sometime.
That being said I don't have that much need, wifi in the attic is pretty unstable, so it's often faster just to grab the sd card. Some sort of monitoring would be nice but also not really needed.
Running up and down the stairs really doesn't hurt me anyway, I can preheat in the meantime
To avoid stairs between desk and printer, create a shared folder on octoprint (or a webdav one) where you copy your files from your desk computer then you transfer the file from octoprint with a sd reader, near your printer.
Searched this a few days ago. Did not find that. Found the bigtree things, but was not sure if it will work, as my MP Select Mini is pretty picky about the SD Cards.
Thanks for the tip and the test.
I'm pretty fine with swapping SD cards on my 3Dprinter, but I think I'm gonna try this thing out in my camera. If I can get this to sync photos off the card over night, I'd be quite happy. I tried an eyeFi card before, but that turned out as a fail because it could only talk to its mobile app.
I wanted to so something similar and the main reason was the issues, which come with USB printing mode. Loss of quality, lags etc. Later on, I heard that there was a solution to this problem. So I stopped on that. It would have been nice to hear a discussion on that regard. This looks like a solution for that problem. It is easier for the printer to print from SD card. Or am I wrong?
I had thought that this might be great for my old anycubic photon but the file size limitation breaks that use case - resin files, particularly with antialiasing, are hundreds of megs.
The photon does have an ethernet port and you can connect it and push print jobs to it over the network, but it is very slow.
Edit to clarify: The photon supports an SD card if you solder some pin headers to the board and connect it, and have firmware that allows it to work. There is also a virtual networked usb stick project you can build with a raspberry pi zero for the photon, which probably works great but i haven't tried it.
I doubt the prusa caches any information from the SD card so every time you go into the file menu it will re read the list of files in that directory and will probably not even read the entire dir into memory so if a file is added to the dir you can probably just scroll down and it'll see it when reading in more info from the SD card.
Looked up there is a ton of versions with usb instead that seems like a great tool
I wonder if, possibly after changing some settings in Marlin, you can do the following:
First upload the G-Code of the thing you want to print.
Then upload a file called "auto0.g" to it, with "M32 P !/[g-code path]#" in it.
With how it seems to work, having Marlin poll the SD card to catch the autostart file might interfere with the operation.
But even if it doesn't work, this still is is useful for not having to carry SD cards around, but instead uploading the file while you walk to the printer.
I think this would make a good solution for SLA Printers. I use something similar (although more complex) on my Mars Pro already. I will try this and see if it's more reliable than what I have now...
I am using OctoPrint with a common NAS repo for all the STL content across the cluster if printers. So I slice to the NAS folder and it shows up in the Remote OctoPrints.
@Thomas Sanladerer
Just a "Quick tip"...
... If You find that You want to calculate how long it takes to a transfer a file with the size is specified using Bytes (as they normally are). But the "transfer speed" is given using "bits" (Mbps, as they normally are).
You do not necessarily have to first divide the "transfer speed" with 8 to figure out the "speed" in MegaBytes/s... AND then divide 1MB with that result ((in effect inverting it)) to figure out the time it takes to transfer 1MB...And then multiply that result the size of Your file in MegaByte, to figure out how long it takes to transfer Your file..As You appear to do @10:59
""You can actually use the old trick"" to take Your "speed" in "Mbits/s", and simply say that it "roughly" takes 8 seconds to transfer the same number of MegaBytes (i.e that is You "MegaByte/8second "speed")...And then if You want to be "Really Specifik" You can divide Your file size (in MegaBytes) with Your "MegaByte/8s" speed, to get the transfer time (roughly) ;)
And hence it takes "roughly" 8 seconds to transfer 1MB at 1Mbps---
Because 1MB/(1MB/8s) = 8s... See much simpler ;)
Best regards.
... And Yes I'm joking (or at least attempting), as I was a bit "taken aback" @10:59 when Thomas paused (and appeared) to "calculate" how long it took to transfer 1 MB at the speed of 1Mbps
"Now... As You were..."
love the new vlogging style!!
there's a commercial equivalent to this in the toshiba flashair - it's a LOT faster than the module shown here and by personal experience doesn't have the same issues with random disconnects on windows. I also have octoprint attached to my printer but no longer use it for printing (only diagnostics), as printing from the sd card allows power recovery to work and isn't noticeably slower. unfortunately these are no longer manufactured so you have to lucky to find one
Dude respect 4 that hair treatment! It actually looks really good! You should consider keeping that style. Also nice detailed review on a very interesting piece of tech.
What brand hoodie is that, I love the look and couldn't figure it out sleuthing through the footage.
I am using Toshiba WiFi card. There were bugs in older MK3 firmwares, but it is fixed now. Currently no problems.
Not all 3D printers are set to auto refresh so some tweaking may be needed. They will be the type where the SD card clicks in and clicks out instead of just sliding in.
Nice, funny actually had one and use it pretty much as you described. With an older resin SLA printer that cannot use with octoprint anyway. It means don't have to swap mini SD card in and out. I used a buck converter off the printer main PSU to power the ESP8266.
Best. Intro. Ever! Nice job on the cut.
Toshiba sells the „FlashAir wireless SD card“ for years and its working flawless with my prusa MK3S for over a year now. It looks like a normal SD card without any exposed electronics.
Wow. Totally was like "Who is this guy" (new to 3d printing so finding vids) and then ALL OF A SUDDEN clippers and buzzing and cutting. Lol.
Instant subbed. Awesome video.
YOOOOO
Very nice camera angle you got there good Sir
Thom, another similar option I am using in my prusa the "toshiba airflash" it is an SD card with Wifi, it was created for cameras but also work at least with my prusa mk2.5, I have some years with it but if my remember is correct it cost me like $35 USD (not complety sure) with international shipping
Forgot to tell, the Toshiba airflash can be also put as network disk in Windows (never try with other SO) so you can see it like another USB Disk (for example) but by WiFi xD
Even though I am not going to use this for my 3D Printer, I do appreciate this video, because I have been looking for a similar solution to get the data off of the SD card in my CPAP machine. I just bought one of these, and I am going to experiment to see if I can read the data off of the SD Card while it is inserted into the machine on my computer. This will save me taking out the SD Card, putting it in the PC, copying the data, and then putting the card back in the machine every day.
As someone who's facing issues with my pi disconnecting from my printer mid print this is an interesting possible solution. I can wait a minute for a print to upload for the sake of not repeating prints and wasting filament
I would like to see a open project where we use all means (Stepper effort meassurement, acelerometer and or Camera observing the printhead) to close the loop and for example stop printing if the head runs into an obstacle or the Printed object breaks off and airstrings are printed...
I have had thosiba flashair for some time. on that card I can access it while printing, can upload files etc. But, I cannot control the printer with pronterface or something.
Tshiba makes this in a cleaner package called FlashAir and they work fine as long as you make sure your printer can handle the generation of card (SDHC vs SDXC)
Great video today and nice hair cut! A note on the SD cable adapter. Be careful not to bend this cable too much. Had 2 of mine die because of the way I was using it.
wonder if it will be more stable with usb power plugged in?
But this is like the perfect thing for me, i hate running back and forth with sdcards, but i dont really want or need the whole octoprint setup.
9:25 - The esp8266 wifi server was disconnected when you removed usb power supply. Must be some way to configure auto connect?
Wow! I was thinking of how I could do this in my car entertainment system so I no longer need to remove the card to add movies for the kids! Idk how this popped up, but perfect timing! Thank you!
This solutionis way too slow to transfer movies, as well as a ~20MB size limit which makes copying media impossible. Other SD cards with wifi built-in exist, but not at this price.
Lol, saved me from trying this out and being disappointed. Will do some research for sure before selecting a solution. Thank you! Maybe will use this for something else.
I had to watch part of the video three times after realizing that I stopped listening and was just staring at his hair. :-D Well done!
Going deep... please could you see if it possible to set up a static IP on the fizzytech?
I'd be willing to brave a few of those bugs to try them instead of Octoprint on Makerbots, but for sake of sanity I've got to assign known IPs to things on the network and not just reserve on the router.
My Toshiba Flashair finally started working reliably, but if it gets finicky again I'm so glad there's another option.
Love the hair. Should have cut CNC logo into the back lol. Stefan your move.
Man, so unfortunate that Tom doesn't have a logo for me to cut into my hair...
Look at the "Stuff Made Here" RUclips channel for a CNC hair cut robot !
@@CNCKitchen You'll simply have to cut out his profile picture instead!
I'd pay money to watch you have @toms3dp cut in to you hair. Maybe you could engineer a 3d printed solution.
Is there a "Best" FlashAir alternative?
Flashair doesn't have any of these limitations, but it looks like that market changed...glad I got one with my MK3 early
So I actually found this device super interesting, not really for my 3d printer but for other things that moving the sd around would be inconvenient, so thanks for that. I would note, even though it's not recommended at all, Octoprint does work (albiet slowly) on the Pi Zero W which is $10. While admittedly that's not a great option, I think it would be better then this device.
Been using a Toshiba FlashAir Wi-Fi SD card for years now. A little harder to setup, but works flawlessly.
That haircut,I think the lockdowns have made you a little crazy tom.
Thank you for sharing this video,I shall give the sd wi-fi a try.
Oh god the wobbly camera is back !
This was so popular in photography a few years back but I remember them being much smaller in size
Unless you are on a tight budget being able to send directly from Prusa Slicer to OctoPrint and start the print is hard to beat.
So its the same as Toshiba Flash Air but you can change the storage inside it?
That intro was amazing!
Way to go, Tom! I cut my hair just that way a couple of months ago... I went for a whole year without a haircut.
Me too. I was literally rocking the exact same haircut as Tom, and not I have the same exact haircut as him afterwards because I was so fed up with having my long hair fall on my face.
Can we get some info on that jacket/hoodie?
When you explained the features of this card I thought of using it for a Timelapse camera with a pc automatically offloading the pictures
Is this thing work better than EZ Share or Toshiba FlashAir adaprers? that adapters fit all the same inside standard SD card case without that external part
can you put this in your camera and see if you can transfer files to the pc?
Been lurking awhile, intro got me to subscribe lol
Digging that shirt... New channel options? Thomas Styles and 3d printing. Home haircut hints are a bonus!
Thank you so much .I have a flashforrge finder light with no usb so can't do octoprint. now have to wait for my clone to get here but this will help so much ..cheers
is there one of these that works as a USB drive? I am figuring I can add a USB to sd card adapter...
I am attempting to use my Blink camera system with something like this
so besides providing access to the storage of the printer over the network it doesn't do anything else?
you can install an ftp or samba server on the pi and then push over wifi your code.
In Linux command line stuff a space is written as "\" [backslash space] maybe that helps
Daumen hoch für diese geile Aktion
Been looking for something like this. I'm sure octo print is fine, but if you only have a few printers, and even less $$$. This looks like a good option. Also my last sd card read on one of my printer died have pulling and out the card so much.
I didn't read all 222 comments, but i'm going to guess that when saving your INI file from windows it saved the line endings as CRLF, but linux is very picky about that will not read your file properly that way. You'll need to ensure you save the file with LF line endings ( you can do this in notepad++ or vscode)
What's con of using like toshiba flashair ? or similar one .
These are very interesting and something I could use outside of 3D printing...especially since I'm VERY new to this. One thing I have been looking to find for a long time (and it might even exist) but that I have not found is a micro USB wifi adaptor that uses wifi to replace the physical USB wire. As far as the printer and PC would be concerned it would appear and operate just as a standard cabled USB connection...just without a physical wire to get in the way. I'm thinking a USB dongle on each end (ie one plugged into a USB port on the PC and the other into the printer), they'd pair and then just show up and work as though they were physically cabled together. This would give all the benefits of a USB connection without any of the distance limitations and would be hugely helpful for way more than just printing. As I said I have been looking for a long time and haven't found anything out there like it, and since I just do not have the skills to make one myself I'm just going to have to keep looking. But if anyone understands what I've described and knows where I can get one I would LOVE to get your input.
I use a Raspberry Pi and VirtualHere Usb server combination to connect my 3d printer remotely . Maybe you can do a test. This videos method is limited to eap chip performance. RPI has a better wifi performance.
How did you manage to get lower case letters in pronterface ?