[SOLVED] Controlling Astroprint directly from installed Pi?

AstroBox Questions
#1

Been looking around and can’t seem to find an answer.

I have Astroprint installed and working on a Raspberry Pi on my Taz5 printer. I’m wondering if it’s possible to control the astroprint software directly from the Pi, with a monitor, keyboard and mouse connected to the Raspberry Pi that’s running the Astroprint software.

When I boot it up, I see a logon prompt. It works fine through a browser on another machine, but am wondering if it can be controlled directly from the Pi it’s running on.

If so, how would this be accomplished.

Thanks.
Thomas

Control astroprint on astrobox
#2

Correct.

You can certainly control your astrobox from another machine in the same network or (with port forwarding) on a remote machine.

Just head to http://10.10.0.1 or http://Astrobox.local.

Not sure if I am answering your question, but, you can certainly control your astrobox from a web browser.

If you are talking about controlling the Astrobox/3D Printer via command line through the Raspberry Pi’s terminal, NO, it’s NOT possible to do that.

The only methods would be via Web browser locally or through web browser remotely via Astroprint.com.

#3

Yes, I’m aware that I can control it through another machine, but what I was hoping to do was to control it directly through the Pi. I was hoping that the graphical interface you see when accessing it remotely was available directly on the Pi it was running on. That would be much more convenient for me, as I could just throw a monitor on the Pi, KB and Mouse and I’d be all set.

Instead, I have to have a laptop handy at the printer along with the Pi that’s running the Astroprint software. Seems to me that you should be able to control it directly on the Pi, but I guess not?

Thomas

#4

This may be too obvious but…

if you boot up you pi with a keyboard an mouse and enter the GUI then launch a web browser I would think you could then got to astroprint.com as usual and run the pi, or put in the pi’s own IP address and operate the pi locally from its own more limited astroprint dashboard.

I haven’t actually tried this and don’t have time to do it right at the moment but maybe I will give it a shot tonight. Seems like it should work no problem but you never know…also I don’t know if the OS installed with the Pi image files contains a GUI or a web browser so some installation and setup may be required but it seems pretty straightforward.

#5

That sounds like it could work. If it works for you, if you could let me know. I don’t know what the login would be on the default astroprint distribution, or how to get the gui started. Please excuse my ignorance, as I’ve never worked with linux.

Thanks!
Thomas

#6

You might find this useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smpAkdBX2bM

#7

I successfully achieved my goal.

As it turns out, the Astroprint distribution doesn’t have any of the gui stuff I needed to accomplish my goal. As such, I did the following.

  1. Once my Astroprint distribution had booted up, I signed in using pi/raspberry (login/password).
  2. sudo apt-get install lightdm xorg lxde
  3. sudo raspi-config and selected boot to gui with automatic sign-in

Once rebooted, the raspberry pi boots into the gui, and firefox is already there, installed and working.

I then as usual, connected to my Astroprint software and was up and running. I’ve tried doing a software update under this configuration and it worked fine too.

So there you go… anyone else wanting to use their Raspberry Pi for more than just running Astroprint can now do so.

Thomas

7 Likes
#8

Cool, I am glad that worked…I think I will at some point do an astrobox reimagined and no I have the steps to get the GUI all spelled out vs going the other way and installing the std Pi stuff then trying to get astrobox to work.

2 Likes
#9

FYI…

I got this going as well…only one issue is the web browser is quite slow on my Pi2…more so than I remember before it was an astrobox but hard to say…I also had one unexplained crash where the printer just stopped…this is not new but since it happened right after I got the GUI going I though I would mention it…

One tip is to keep your models and designs on local server or better a web server…this allows you to develop on your computer and then when you want to you can go to the AstroPrint box next to your printer and slice and print…this is kinda the opposite of remote printing but turns out to be handy since I like to be near the printer for the first layer but I like to create my files and designs elsewhere…having access to the cloud slicer and astroprint with a monitor and keyboard/mouse next to the printer where I can make slice tweaks etc without having a full computer near by makes for a good setup for me…

1 Like
#10

Good to hear you got it going as well. I haven’t had any crashes since deploying the GUI on my Pi running the astrobox software, however, I concur that it’s slow. About as slow as I remember without astrobox running. Also been testing this on a Pi2.

Personally, I don’t slice using the astrobox. I do all my work on a different PC, developing in 123D Design, and slicing/gcode generation using Simplify3D. Then upload the gcode to the box and print that.

Thomas

1 Like
#11

I’ve been driving myself crazy for hours trying to figure this out. Thank you!!

#12
#13

I have edited this with a missing command as found out by @Darrel_R_Barnette here: Control astroprint on astrobox