so its been requested i change our Pi 4 to a windows 10 machine for security reasons
I'm going to try this soon but wondering how i can turn the printer on without GPIO pins on the pi
from an electronics point of view i can think of a few options like this
Ryanteck RTk.GPIO (PC GPIO Interface) – Pi Supply (pi-supply.com)
but is there anything i can do that is natively supported or with a basic plugin?
id also like to avoid smart plugs.
hi Ewald
there not a great option for me due to network security. i also don't trust them to turn off at the right time if there is any network issues. part off the risk assessment includes the safety shutdown in the octotprint software.
I don't think any of the plugins that work over GPIO will work with something else plugged into a PC, since there would be quite a different way to communicate with them. So you would probably have to modify a plugin to add the code to communicate with whatever additional hardware you add.
Converting from Linux to Windows doesn't seem like a great idea to me - but I guess if you have to do it...
Linux is not supported by the patch management system we have so cant really be managed well from a security point of view. the pi will always be behind on software
unfortunately i don't have the skills to make or modify plugins.
what I'm looking for really is: "i had that problem. i used hardware Y and plugin X to solve it"
i know this isnt going to be super common but fingers crossed
Do a Google search for "gpio windows pc". Lots of options available including this one from Adafruit.
There are a couple of articles from Microsoft on the list.
There is currently someone on the Discord server attempting to create this plugin using an adafruit FT232H device. Don't think they've made it that far yet.
Now, this is in Ubuntu, and not windows 10. But I do have jneillii's subplugin for PSUcontrol working and it will turn an led off through the GPIO pins on an FT232H attached to a desktop running ubuntu. I'm not sure what would need to be done to make this work in windows at this point, but I don't think it would be overly different, just the windows way. adafruit-blinka can be installed in windows, and so can OctoPrint. so, i imagine it's probably doable. I'm just busy getting the Linux side to work. I've never played with OctoPrint on windows, but I assume if you have Octoprint, adafruit-blinka, and pyftdi installed in windows, the same plugins will just work.
Seems there is starting to be a bit more of a want for getting GPIO on systems other than the Raspberry Pi.
And if it will turn an led on and off, it will run a relay to turn a PSu on and off. If you're interested in trying it out, As long as you get octoprint working on windows, i can help get adafruit-blinka and pyftdi installed and working for you. The subplugin will work fine. Not sure how it would work over multiple instances of octoprint running at the same time, because i do know that if octoprint has a hold of the ft232h in the venv environment, i can't access it without shutting down octoprint.
Well, after alot of trial and error, there is a port of OctoLight as well that works.
That's really great!
I don't have time just yet to get it all set up. But will definitely try to get thouse bits working. I will report back when ready to try bits.
There’s a new plugin which drives I/O through a USB port, which avoids needing GPIO. should work fine with Windoze. I’ve been considering using USB controlled I/O, just haven’t got round to it.