Thank you everyone. Im such a noob and not a computer programmer so I dont understand a lot of what you are recommending. Ill try to explain my confusions.
Insert the html....? I was able to get and load the plugin (I think) but when I tried to refresh the new Octoprint wouldnt accept it and gave the above error about compatibility. Im not sure where to get the HTML or why installing it that way would suddenly make it compatible. Could you explain? I dont really care which octoprint version I use so long as it works with my printer.
mod38 Thank you. I am running on my windows computer. how do I install the older versions you referenced if I do revert back? also same html question where do I get the html.
Again thank you all and sorry I am very ignorant in this
OK sorry, I assumed you were using a Raspberry Pi which is a very neat and cheap way of running Octoprint with a webcam. There is a very nice package called OctoPi which loads OctoPrint, Cura and MPEG-Streamer very neatly.
I'm not sure how it all goes on the Windows installation but what we have been talking about is using the plugin manager in Octoprint. If you look up the M33 Fio plugin you will find is is marked as disabled in the repository but the plugin manager still lets you install it putting the address where it is to be found. Take a look at the link above about the abandoned plugin.
So I am able to install the plugin. the problem is Octoprint refuses to run it. I uninstalled the plugin and I used the html to reinstall and that didnt work. give the error not compatible with 1.4. Thoughts?
Ok, this one loads up without errors that I can tell, but of course I don't know if it functions as intended since I don't have this type of printer. Use the URL below in plugin manager. If it works, I'll be happy to submit a PR to the original repository.
Gina has I think already said that it is not compatible with 1.4. This is why I am running the last 1.3 version. Donovan6000 did great work reverse engineering the M3D firmware and giving better access to it but he got no thanks from M3D and dropped it eventually.
Here is the link that Gina gives Setting up OctoPrint on Windows but you will see that it is a little out of date. The latest versons of Octoprint now run on Python3. You will also see at the top of the link that Gina recommends you just buy a Raspberry Pi and access it over a browser from your Windows machine. The webcam is oprional if you want to keep the cost down, a Pi 3A+ has one USB port for running the Micro and you will normally access it headless over the OctoPrint web interface. There is on-board Bluetooth if you really want to talk to it with a keyboard and mouse but your cost would be just for the Pi with a decent power supply and an 8GB microSD card. You can then use the Octopi version I mentioned above, load the plugin and be up and running in no time.
Hi Gina
It's great that OctoPrint 1.4.0 can run under Python 2 or 3 but the OP may end up running 1.3.10 so will this run under Python 3? I am just trying to help him but I agree with your advice to forget windows and just buy a Pi.
The M33 Fio plugin was great when it appeared but M3D were so hostile to it that when they ran out of programming resources themselves they had alienated the person who could possible have made their later machines work and he ended up abandoning it.
No one has reported back if my patched version works for them. I was able to install and it loads in OctoPrint 1.4.0. Use the URL below in plugin manager.
Hi
I have a M3D Micro (a crap printer and I’m sorry if anyone actually paid money for one).
I am just dragging mine out and trying to get things working again. I have octoprint 1.4 installed (an upgrade to an installed 1.3 version)
I’m running Octoprint on a laptop with Ubuntu 18.04 with octoprint installed as a python2 virtualenv
For Ubuntu I needed to make sure the usb-serial kernel module was installed and the port is configured with the correct permissions. Changing the permissions to 666 was necessary to have octoprint communicate.
In octoprint I needed to manually select 115200 Baud and /dev/tty/ACM0
The printer was communicating, but hanging until I selected “Request exclusive access to the serial port”
Currently I have the print head moving and extruder warmup, but I have not yet done any test prints.
I, too, have an M3D Micro (from Kickstarter back then). Never worked well. Discovered OctoPrint just a few days ago, installed it on one of my RasPis and was wondering if/how it would work with the M3D Micro which I still have.
Found this thread but am confused now: WILL it work with the latest OctoPi version? Would I need a plugin? Will that be available and compatible?
To be truly honest, we don't know either. The original author of that plugin didn't update it, the best we can get is the link from @jneilliii:
The only way it seems we will be able to know for definite is if someone with one of these printers tries it on a newer OctoPrint version (we're on 1.6.1 now). So I guess we might be about to find out if it works...?
Okay, I will try to help finding things out.
(I wrote this answer and embedded several screenshots. However, because I'm a new user I'm only allowed to embed just one image. Would've been nice to know that in advance ... As a workaround I screenshotted my answer with the embedded screenshots and embedded that as the one image I'm allowed. So please click on this image to read my findings.)
I'm running OctoPrint (via the latest OctoPi image) 1.6.1 on a RasPi 4B (2GB RAM) and have the M3D Micro (Kickstarter Edition) connected to the Pi via USB.
Now I don't know about the current firmware version of my M3D Micro and I don't know how to read it out or how to flash a newer one if there was one. The M3D Micro is very old and I guess that their software for it isn't available anymore or wouldn't work on todays computers/OSes?!
So that's the current state of my research. Will investigate further.
Okay, I found out that the M3D Website for downloads is still there and downloaded their Mac software. It's from 2016(!) and contains a Mono framework version. So first installed that one on my iMac running Catalina. Turns out: the M3D software doesn't launch and complains that the Mono version "is not support":
So I downloaded the latest Mono framework version from the Mono project website but – no surprise – with that version installed it doesn't work either and comes up with the same dialog. Oh well.
Being dependant on the Mono framework at all was one of the reasons why I didn't like the printer in the first place. I don't use Windows at all (besides at work where I'm forced to) and for a Mac user having to install Mono was a pain in the rear.
So. Long story short: no way for me to check or update the printer's firmware I guess?!
The Linux package is an amd64 architecture version so no arm version for the Raspi available.
And Windows I can't test (no, won't even install a virtual Windows on my Mac).
So I guess that's it.
I expect my Prusa3D i3mk3s+ printer (kit) arriving on Tuesday. So I'm not going to spend more effort into making the M3D Micro (a crappy 3D printer!) run with OctoPrint.
Well ...
One more thing ...
I found the iMe firmware from donovan6000 over at github and tried to run the M33 Manager app on my Catalina based Mac. It didn't see the connected printer. In an issue somebody fixed that and I downloaded his branch's source and tried to compile it. Turned out that M33 Manager uses wxWidgets. So I downloaded their source, compiled and installed it. Then back to M33 Manager (with the fix) and compilation now worked!
Launched M33 Manager and, indeed, it now found my M3D Micro and was able to connect and read out its color and firmware version.
I then flashed it with the iMe firmware and also made the bed position calibration.So, for the very first time in many years I heard the M3D Micro make sounds through its stepper motors.
Unfortunately, this all didn't help to make OctoPrint see the connected printer.
When I connected the M3D Micro back to the Raspi I now saw two new entries in the tty device list:
