First of all good afternoon everyone and thank you so much for your efforts.
As you can argue, I’m upgrading an old 3d printer, in this case the Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus.
I had a very old Asus eeepc 900, on which I made the following modifications:
removed the 8Gb SSD for it is not large enough (it’s working…), I’m using a Verbatim 16Gb usb 2.0 dongle which has about 5Gb left after all the installation process, it’s formatted Ext4
substituted the 1Gb ram module with a 2Gb, the max amount handled by the netbook
I installed Debian 12 x86 LxQt, on which I removed some big software (like LibreOffice, Thunderbird etc…) and installed something less heavy (AbiWord, GnuMeric) and a couple of service software I may need in the future (xchm, secure-delete, testdisk, gparted etc…)
since the netbook is low on specs I decided to install Epiphany-browser (which may be the problem, but I’m not sure)
the remaining 4Gb SSD, soldered on the motherboard of the netbook, has been used as swap
the integrated sound card and the webcam are disabled from the bios, as well as the touchpad, the latter is broken
After cloning the git for Klipper and Kiauh I proceeded with Kiauh, please find attached the screenshot of the terminal with my actual situation under Kiauh.
Using Kiauh I also compiled and flashed (succesfully) the firmware for the motherboard, here is where it is located (I use always the same usb port, since one is used the mouse, the second
by the OS and this is the last one):
/dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB2.0-Serial-if00-port0
I obviously copied the line in the printer.cfg file (the one for my printer taken from the configs, but I’m not really sure on where it has to be put, at the moment is in /home/alex/kiauh/kiauh/components/klipper/assets).
The issue I’m experiencing is accessing to the Mainsail page from the netbook itself, opening Epiphany and giving the address localhost or localhost:7125:
first I have an error loading the page, then, watching the application bar, I can see the Mainsail title appear, then ERROR, and the error page again, then the page turns black, I can see some parts of the page in the top area, an error message, but the rest of the page remains black.
Is the browser unable to show correctly the page?
Keep in mind that the motherboard is connected on my desk with the usb cable, but unmounted from the printer, because I wanted to solder the missing connectors (Ext and Z-probe).
Thank you very much for your help in advance, best regards,
Generally I would not advise to use the host device for anything but Klipper
Desktop Linux variants are known to be prone to causing additional issues / points of failure
Klipper is expecting (in the default configuration) to find the printer.cfg in the printer_data/config/ folder, this means in your case under /home/alex/printer_data/config/printer.cfg
Thank you for the reply.
Indeed I’m not really sure such an old netbook can handle that load, but I like the idea to use its monitor as a display, due to the fact that I’m losing the original one from the manufacturer (and it is somewhat a pity to me…after all it’s a fine touch display with 65k colors, not the usual 128x64 with the encoder/pushbutton).
Anyway, since my devices are in my office and I’ll go back to work after tomorrow, I’ll try to move the file this Friday.
I also have a Raspberry Pi 3B, if the load is too much I can try to use it too, I’ll put the SSD back in the netbook and make a clean Debian install.
Another reason to avoid using the RPi was the fact that the printer is in my office, so I wanted to avoid the need to create another network; maybe I can find a crossed cable to connect my netbook and the RPi by wire and deactivate all the wifi devices.
Do you know if the RPi can automatically detect a crossed or straight cable and manage the connection accordingly?
Klipper itself and most of its ecosystem do not require much CPU power or memory. Anything from the RPi 3 class and above is fully sufficient.
WIFI?
Actually never tried but I see no reason why using a cross-over patch cable should not work.
Although it should not even be needed since Ethernet hardware knows “autosensing” for at least a decade now, so a straight patch cable is sufficient.
No kinds of network, it has to be a closed system.
The graphics can be the bottleneck, cause its requirements are time consuming and can negatively affect Klipper’s performances, but I’m gonna try anyway. If it fails I’ll switch to the cable solution. The worst part will be upgrading the Rpi and the firmware on the motherboard, but the firmware will be rarely needed, I think…
Not sure what you are referring to but again: The Klipper host should only do its host thing and nothing else. Otherwise, you are asking for hard to diagnose issues.
Since I own a RPi 3B I decided to switch to it and connect to the NetBook by a simple cable, some lag in the graphic can be acceptable, problems in the prints are not.
I’m waiting to place an order on Amazon to add a suitable power supply, then I’ll proceed for the configuration.
Netbook with its original SSD, working, the sound card, the touchpad and the wifi card are disabled from the bios
Debian 12 x86 installed, I removed Libreoffice and a couple of other things, installed net-tools, nmap, Firefox-esr and some other tools like testdisk, secure delete etc…
RPi 3B, installed Raspbian x64 via the Imager, no GUI, installed iptables, ssh enabled, the username is alex, I’m using an 8Gb microSd (about 500Mb left…), wifi disabled within the file /boot/config/config.txt
iptables has been installed only to verify that all the 3 chains are enabled and no rules are blocking connections
using Kiauh I installed Klipper, Moonraker and Mainsail, discovered the connection port, then I took the printer.cfg file for my wanhao, placed it in the /home/alex/printer_data/config/ directory and modified the serial port in it
I modified the /etc/network/interfaces file both on the netbook and RPi to force static ip’s, I forced 192.168.1.10 on the RPi and 192.168.1.11 on the netbook
Still I can’t open an ssh connection from the netbook to the RPi, neither using the browser, but I can provide a couple of details: the netbook doesn’t take the 192.168.1.11 ip, using hostname -I I get 169.254.45.216 and the nmap search from the prompt says that it finds an host, but it seems to be down, using the -Pn options it says 0 hosts up.
Instead I know that it is up…
Your netbook seems not correctly configured. 169.254.x.x is indicative for an issue with the DHCP configuration. The standard in DHCP is to assign an IP address from this range, when no valid IP address could be assigned.
That you do not get any connection is a direct consequence of this.
Please revert to communities that are specialized in dealing with Linux configuration as this kind of troubleshooting is beyond Klipper’s scope.
Oh yeah, I think I made it
During the first boot of the RPi there were a power supply failure, despite the fact that the Ext4 filesystem is journaled something messy happened to the micro SD.
I formatted it, did the installation with the imager again and enabled ssh and wifi from the imager, now I can reach the RPi both using the hotspot from my cellphone and connecting directly by a lan cable.
I installed again Kiauh, then Klipper, Moonraker and Mainsail, moved the configuration file in the printer_data/config directory and set the serial connection, now I have to put back together the printer, but I have 2 questions in one:
within the printer.cfg file I didn’t find any trace of Bl Touch and Skew factor configuration, are they done differently?
Next week I’ll bring with me the sensor and I’ll mount the printer as (internally) full option as possible, I’d prefer not to dismantle it again…
Since I installed less software now I have about 800Mb free, so an 8Gb memory card is just enough for a headless RPi installation with Klipper, using Raspbian 12 x64.
