Hello, I an fairly new to 3d printing and came across octoprint to help me refine my process. I already own a raspberrypi 3b+ and am familiar witwith creating the system images. But before I pursue octoprint further i wanted to ask a question, context to follow.
Does octoprint/octopi affect the printer's onboard firmware? If I unplug the usb cable will the printer function as it already does?
I ask because I bought a budget chinese knockoff to experiment with and cannot find a source file for the firmware it already has. So if the octoprint program breaks it then i will only ever be able to use it with octoprint.
Thank you for your help.
I don't think I'd unplug the USB cable from the controller in your printer during a print job. It's possible that this would stop the job.
But that's the biggest benefit of using a Raspberry Pi 3B that's dedicated to all this. Just leave it there and you interact with the web service which runs on that.
No, octoprint is a host program like repetier host or pronterface. All it does is send gcode to your printer, it doesn't modify the printer's firmware.
Thank you. I haven't set up my pi yet and was concerned that it might mess up the printer.
Not asking about pulling the plug during the print.
I will note that I use the Marlin EEPROM Editor plugin within OctoPrint to adjust z-offset, for example.