Ender 3 stops responding to Octoprint

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1

What is the problem?

Sometimes in the middle of printing, or after sitting Idle for a while, Octoprint disconnects from the printer. Running the latest Octoprint on a Pi4, and it has been running for about 3 years with the upgrades done as they come out.

What did you already try to solve it?

Replaced USB cable from pi to printer with another new quality shielded cable, changed USB ports on the pi, both USB2 and USB3 ports

Have you tried running in safe mode?

yes

Did running in safe mode solve the problem?

no

Systeminfo Bundle

You can download this in OctoPrint's System Information dialog ... no bundle, no support!)

octoprint-systeminfo-20241018132811.zip (2.3 MB)

Additional information about your setup

OctoPrint version, OctoPi version, printer, firmware, browser, operating system, ... as much data as possible

  • OctoPrint 1.10.2
  • Python 3.11.2
  • OctoPi 1.1.0
    Using a USB connected NVMe 128G SSD for storage, no SD card, Short shielded USB to MicroUSB cable to the printer. Printer has the Creality V4.2.7 silent main board. Power supply for the Pi is a POE hat rated 4 amps, PS for the printer is the Meanwell 24V RSP500 500W supply
2

That's some weird behaviour of your printer's firmware:

2024-10-18 13:17:00,905 - Recv:  T:21.52 /0.00 B:26.26 /0.00 @:0 B@:0
2024-10-18 13:17:02,905 - Recv:  T:21.45 /0.00 B:26.25 /0.00 @:0 B@:0
2024-10-18 13:17:04,905 - Recv:  T:21.52 /0.00 B:26.26 /0.00 @:0 B@:0
2024-10-18 13:17:06,905 - Recv:  T:21.54 /0.00 B:26.24 /0.00 @:0 B@:0
2024-10-18 13:17:08,905 - Recv:  T:21.46 /0.00 B:26.19 /0.00 @:0 B@:0
2024-10-18 13:17:17,921 - No response from printer after 3 consecutive communication timeouts, considering it dead. Configure long running commands or increase communication timeout if that happens regularly on specific commands or long moves.
2024-10-18 13:17:17,939 - Changing monitoring state from "Operational" to "Offline after error"
2024-10-18 13:17:17,946 - Connection closed, closing down monitor

Note how it happily sends a temperature autoreport every 2s. And then suddenly it stops. OctoPrint thus no longer gets anything from it, expects temperature reports every 2s however, as your firmware reported that it supports autoreporting:

2024-10-18 11:09:52,283 - Recv: Cap:AUTOREPORT_TEMP:1

and then got told to do that every 2s:

2024-10-18 11:09:52,958 - Send: M155 S2
2024-10-18 11:09:52,968 - Recv: ok

So, either something crashes inside the firmware, stopping the autoreports, or some firmware developer here decided that autoreports don't need to continue for temperatures below 21.46degC.

Either way, I suggest you try disabling autoreporting support, let OctoPrint poll the temperature instead, and see if that helps. If this is the firmware crashing internally, that likely won't help, but if it's some autoreporting implementation fsck up, it just might.

3

I discovered the issue. I had set up an integration in Home Assistant for OctoPrint to remotely monitor status, temps etc without needing to open a web browser. Evidently, it polls the raspberry pi continuously for all the data OctoPrint can provide, and somehow was killing the serial comms. I disable the integration and we haven't seen the issue since.
Thank you

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