Evaluating Klipper

General Discussion
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Basic Information:

Printer Model: Ender 5 Pro
MCU / Printerboard: Creality V4.2.7
Host / SBC Pi4B
klippy.log

Fill out above information and in all cases attach your klippy.log file (use zip to compress it, if too big). Pasting your printer.cfg is not needed
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Describe your issue:

… Observations on Klipper install and use

I wanted to evaluate Klipper.

Using the Raspberry Pi OS (legacy 32 bit) Lite image, Kiauh, a configuration file ‘printer-creality-ender5pro-bltouch-v4.2.7.cfg’ and the wealth of information on the Klipper and Octoprint forums I flashed Klipper on my Ender 5 Pro and installed Moonraker, Mainsail, Fluidd, Crowsnest and Octoprint on a Pi4B. I found that the USB link would not work until I set the baud rate to 115200 in the Printer.cfg file (having specified that rate in the ’make menuconfig’ procedure). Once that was done the communication came online. Mainsail, Fluidd and Octoprint happily coexisted and were accessible on the ports chosen during Kiauh and the default port (5000) for Octoprint.

Both Mainsail and Fluidd worked as expected and Crowsnest found the attached USB camera without any problems. However this was not the case with Octoprint which apparently uses a different streaming setup. I was not able to solve that issue.

Similarly both Mainsail and Fluidd display a very easy to interpret height map but I could not get Octoprint Bed Visualizer to display a mesh after mapping the six points on the bed.

I found that, compared to the clean simple UI of Octoprint, both Mainsail and Fluidd UIs are fussy and not ergonomic. Choosing the Extruder and Bed temperatures in the Klipper UIs is overly finicky compared to the two mouse clicks that do the job in Octoprint.

If you need to have a screen full of information about the many parameters the Klipper UIs present then fine but I found them overly complicated and unnecessary. I can understand that many users like to have that level of control and when actually printing Klipper seems to be faster than the Marlin/Octoprint combination, which may be important in a commercial environment, but for me, a home hobbyist, it is not.

This is definitely a case of horses for courses, but for me, the hoops I had to jump through to get Klipper installed and tuned was not worth the effort when the Octopi distribution available in the Pi Imager is so convenient.

I am puzzled by the remarks critical of posting this opinion on the Octoprint forum and will post it on a Klipper forum too if it makes the critics happy.

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I’m not sure what you are targeting at:

  • Klipper and Klipper UIs are different projects and have different maintainers
  • Mainsail, fluidd, Octoprint, Klipperscreen etc are a matter of taste. There is no right or wrong
  • All these products offer certain degrees of customizing. Of course the level of customizing Octoprint offers in unsurpassed. FWIW, Mainsail and fluidd also offers to change the layout and somewhat “declutter” it - again a matter of taste
  • Octoprint still uses Klipper’s “legacy” interface, so it is possible (and already the case) that certain functionality never appears in Octoprint, unless an interested developer establishes a plugin for Octoprint that utilizes the modern infrastructure.
  • Klipper essentially needs none of them. You can fully operate it from the command line if you wish to.
  • All of these products and their interfaces are open source, free of charge and documented. Go wild on them if you feel the need to do so.
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