Raspian and Octoprint together on USB storage device

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1

A question about the Raspberry PI 3 B+.

Is it possible to have Raspian and Octoprint on the same USB storage device?

I have Octoprint on the RPI 3 B+ and it works fine, but I was thinking about putting the Rapsian OS and Octoprint on the same drive, using a multi boot software, along with a touch screen for the Raspberry, so that when I want to download 3D printable files to store on said USB storage with the RPI 3 B+ through wifi and load them to Octoprint for printing.

I hope this makes sense and I'm looking forward to any info. I'm new at this.

Thanks

2

Hi there Spyman

I think there may be a bit of confusion here. Octoprint is the software that shows you the printer and controls. It is Python based, and runs on "pretty much" any computer

The operating system (Optopi) is based on Raspbian Lite...

Which means that if you have Octopi, you already have a Lite version of Raspbian, with Octoprint already installed

Now, as far as USB is concerned, that's another issue entirely. The Raspberry Pi doesn't "easily" boot to USB. It CAN happen, but, it's a project

The Raspberry Pi natively boots to the MicroSD card slot

If you have the Octopi image, then you already have the ability to download gcode files to your printer without any further steps, other than to configure WiFi, and connect to the built in web server interface thru whatever computer you have in your house

Now, if all you want to do is carry around a USB thumb drive to store gcode files from the local library or coffee shop, then the USB thumb drive doesn't need an operating system, it's just a storage device, and that's all it needs to be. Remember the Raspberry Pi IS A COMPUTER. If you plug in the thumb drive to the Pi running Octopi, you can already access the files on it thru your touch screen interface

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Thank you for the response. You had me think.. I can connect with my main desk top to the Raspberry, via IP address, upload the gcode file and using Octoprint, I can print it. Maybe I'm looking into playing more than I should. I'm new to this and very excited about some of the things that are possible.

Thanks for you input

4

No problem. Happy I was able to help

Stay excited. The only limits are your imagination :wink:

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5

Hello! I am new to all of this and came across this thread and it was pretty much what I was trying to figure out and was wondering if you might be able to shine some light on my issue....

I just received my RP and days after noticed that the RP OS had been updated. I would like to run the RP OS as well as Octoprint. Everything I’ve found online suggests installing Octopi but that seems to put me in a situation that I’m not interested in. I want to run the RP OS as it is intended(through either the dedicated set-up with monitor/keyboard/mouse or SSH/VNC) with the desktop and all the features of the RP OS.....NOT the Octopi which appears to install the Raspian OS which in the .17 version doesn’t include the latest RP OS. This is possible, yes? Any help would be much appreciated!

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@vrsemurphy, You have two choices here.

  1. Use the OctoPi image which is Raspbian-Lite (0.17.0 is Buster, the most recent version of Raspbian) with OctoPrint and some other goodies already configured.
  2. Install your favorite operating system on the RPi and then manually install OctoPrint and manually install all the other goodies you want/need.

To quote from a previous comment: Think of it this way: OctoPi is more or less the operating system, OctoPrint is the main application that runs on it and actually talks to your printer.

Since you are "new to all of this" I strongly recommend option 1. See @foosel's response at the end of I have desktop on my pi 4b need an icon for octoprint.

If you insist on "run the RP OS as it is intended", I'd recommend buying a second RPi.