Cannot be 1.7.2->1.7.3, look at the changelog, nothing touched even remotely related:
Smells of a printer or MMU firmware bug, because I see no reason that should make either stop responding on receiving either [ or ] as part of an M117 (and in fact I know of at least one other plugin that also happily uses them).
it's worked 100% over the last 6 months and then failed the day after the upgrade many times. The printer is working perfectly via SD card I tested that yesterday. Today I am testing with and without simplyprint to try to eliminate as much as possible.
Then sorry to say this, but it can't possibly be the update. The update 1.7.2 -> 1.7.3 pinned one dependency for python 2 only (you run Python 3) and it fixed a bug in blacklist processing (so plugin subsystem related, as to what may or may not load, and the bug allowed blacklisted plugins to load, it didn't prevent something like simplyprint to load or anything like that that would explain this). That is all. Nothing even remotely connected to printer communication was touched. It could be a plugin update, it could be a firmware update, but it cannot have been the OctoPrint core update. Correlation is not causation, and being intimately familiar with the commits that went into 1.7.3 I really can't see how it could be the cause here.
[...]
Recv: echo:busy: paused for user
[...]
Recv: mmu_get_response - begin move: T-code
Recv: MMU <= 'T0'
Recv: Unloading finished 2
Recv: echo:busy: processing
[...]
Recv: mmu_get_response - begin move: load
Recv: echo:busy: processing
[...]
Recv: echo:busy: processing
[...]
Communication timeout while printing, trying to trigger response from printer. Configure long running commands or increase communication timeout if that happens regularly on specific commands or long moves.
[...]
Recv: LCD status changed
Recv: ok
Send: N50 M117 [SP] Printing 0%*16
Recv: Full RX Buffer
Recv: LCD status changed
Recv: ok
[...]
Send: N51 M117 [SP] Printing 0%*17
Recv: Error:Line Number is not Last Line Number+1, Last Line: 18
Recv: Resend: 19
Recv: ok
[...]
Send: N50 M117 [SP] Printing 0%*16
Recv: LCD status changed
Recv: ok
Send: N51 M117 [SP] Printing 0%*17
Recv: LCD status changed
Recv: ok
Send: N52 M109 S240*89
Recv: LCD status changed
[...]
Recv: LCD status changed
Recv: ok
Send: N53 M117 [SP] Printing 1%*18
Recv: LCD status changed
but it is not resetting the printer and the print is working ok
After this I will turn off the feature to change the display.
So far with the simplyprint screen updates turned off the printer is behaving and the terminal is not showing anything strange. I think I still have serial logging turned on so must remember to turn off.
M117 when used with Marlin software on an Ender 3 pro has a line length of 85 characters total. My use is the Cura extension Gcode Filename format which gets passed to the Post Processing Plugin Display Filename & Layer on LCD. I use "grep '.{85}' *.gcode" in my gcode folder each time I process new stl's If any are found rename and process again. Naled it by accident when layes thru 99 worked but 100 stopped the printer. Line length out of bounds & no caught is an all to common problem.