7 easy steps to set up OctoPrint on Raspberry Pi

If you want to remotely control your 3D printer, OctoPrint might be your choice. This is a very, very short seven-step instruction to show, how OctoPrint is set up on a Raspberry Pi. No pictures, no videos, just the plain vanilla facts.

1. Download Octoprint from octoprint.org.
2. Flash Octoprint image Use, e.g., Etcher from balena to flash the Octoprint image on a micro SD card. Do not format the SD card even if your operating system asks you to do so. Just flash the Octoprint image on the SD card.
3. Setup Wifi Re-insert the SD card in your SD card reader. Edit the file octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt in the boot/ directory. Use an appropriate editor to do this. There is a plethora of information out there that explains why this is important; in case of doubt please use a search engine.
   There are two sections in the file that are relevant:

   ### WPA/WPA2 secured
   #network={
   #  ssid=""
   #  psk=""
   #}
   
   # Uncomment the country your Pi is in ...
   #country=GB # United Kingdom
   #country=CA # Canada
   #country=DE # Germany
   #country=FR # France
   country=US # United States
   

   Take care that you uncomment the country you’re living in and comment out the one that was previously uncommented. Take even more care that you do not only enter the ssid and your password in the WPA/WPA2 section but that you also uncomment the lines starting from network down to and including the line with the single closing brace.

4. Enable SSH To log into your Pi via SSH you may need to enable it first. Do this bei putting an empty file named ssh (without any extension) in the boot/ directory (if it does not exist already, of course). A simple way to create an empty file is to use the following command touch ssh.
5. Fire up the Octopi Put the SD card into your Pi, connect a power source and fire it up! Wait approx. 90 seconds until the boot process is completed.
6. Log in using SSH Use ssh to remotely log into your Pi*. The Octopi will be reachable either by using its IP address (that you will have to find out, e.g., by looking into your router’s attached devices section) or via octopi.local. The latter requires Bonjour to run properly on your computer. Assumed you know the IP address, use this terminal command to log in:
   SSH pi@<ip-address>
   You will be asked to confirm a certificate. Type ‘yes’ followed by a return. Then enter the password. The standard password is raspberry.
   (*Mac users will usually use terminal, Windoze users may want to use PuTTy as a SSH-client.)
7. Change password Change the standard password using the command passwd. You will be asked to enter the old password then twice the new one. Done.
8. Access OctoPrint via web browser Start a web browser and enter http://octoprint.local (requires Bonjour service) or http://<ip_address>. You should see the OctoPrint interface and a setup wizard pop up. This page has a table with settings for many common 3D printers. Follow along and be sure to set up a username and password for your OctoPrint.

Now open up the connection panel on the left. With the options set to “AUTO” hit Connect. If the connection was successful congratulations – you’ve successfully set up OctoPrint!

Optional steps.

1. Static IP Out-of-the-box, your Pi will receive a dynamic IP address. I prefer to have a static IP address.
   When the Pi is booted and you are logged in, use the following command on the command line to edit the dhcpcd.conf file:
   sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf
   Go to the section that looks similar to the following lines…

   interface wlan0
   static ip_address=
   static routers=
   static domain_name_servers=8.8.4.4 8.8.8.8
   

   …and enter your desired IP address, your router’s IP address, and, optionally, your preferred domain name server(s). The ones above are the Google DNSs. Use sudo reboot to reboot the Pi.

2. Full upgrade Consider a full upgrade of your intallation by issuing the following command on your terminal.

   sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade -y
   

   That could take quite some time.