So I run a 3d print lab for students at my college and we have 15 printers most of which are ultimakers. i want to try out the octoprint setup so i can monitor the printers when i am not there. i bought a Raspberry pi 3 B+ and have ruined 4 micro sd cards so far rewriting the octoprint image. So far i can write the image and plug into the pi. the problem im having is finding and connecting to my colleges internet. Ive tried using an Ethernet cable and the pi doesnt seem like its connected. Im also having an issue with finding the ip address for the pi if it is connected. I would love some assistance with this problem.
So far i have written the image using win32 and i left the network settings alone.
(if i did connect to the wifi i would have to log in with my student credentials. not much of an issue but i dont know if that is possible)
I have the pi on and the printer connected. The red light is steady on and the green light blinks at first then turns off.
thank you
what's the network look like ?
has it authentication?
im not sure. the wifi is campus wide and once connected say to a phone or laptop a login window pops up. but the ethernet connection doesnt need login
Your best bet is gonna be ethernet in that case. What does ifconfig eth0 give when you have ethernet connected?
Some background:
- Most colleges received a grant of a large chunk of public IP addresses a long time ago.
- Public IP addresses are then addressable and routable from the Internet at large, "the cloud".
- In the early days this was okay, but the Internet's a wild place now.
- Your college's I.T. staff has likely tightened things down, perhaps to the paranoid level.
If there's an Ethernet hub or switch somewhere in your classroom, then plugging both printers and your intended workstation/laptop into that same switch is your best bet from the standpoint of avoiding your I.T.'s restrictions.
From your description, your school's wi-fi includes an authentication proxy (a.k.a. "captured zone"). You see this at Starbucks, Motel 6, etc. In theory, it would be possible to connect the printers to a captured zone by writing a script which runs on startup that uses curl to pretend to send the correct information after linking. It's probably enough of a pain to merit just resorting to Ethernet.
And yet you say "i want to try out the octoprint setup so i can monitor the printers when i am not there." There are different ways of achieving this.
- Most solutions seem to involve re-routing traffic through "the big router" in such a way that it can ultimately make it to the printer. Your I.T. staff will likely veto this.
- Your I.T. staff could be enticed to set you up with a VPN of some kind to allow you to remotely access your classroom safely. In the corporation world, we routinely do this and it's probably the way to go here.