Unable to detect serial port on Qidi X-Smart

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1

I purchased a Qidi X-Smart from my brother. I have been printing to it by sending files to a usb drive and plugging it into the printer. It has has ethernet and wifi capability, but have been unable to use LAN printing in any slicer other than Qidi's own software.

I setup Octopi 16 on a raspberry pi 2 in hopes that I could use it to send gcode files to the printer over the network. Octoprint hasn't been able to detect a serial port.

Is octoprint compatible with the x-smart? If it is not, I might try a wifi usb drive. Or could try using Qidi's software to pass gcode files from my slicing software to the printer. I've been using a copy of Simplify3D that my brother gave me.

2

OctoPrint is designed to print over a USB cable connected to the printer. OctoPrint normally runs on a computer connected to a network, so you can access OctoPrint over the network. Put OctoPrint itself prints over USB.

Your printer implements a proprietary protocol to print over the network. Short of either Qidi publishing the protocol, or someone reverse engineering it, there is no way for other slicers or OctoPrint to use that network connection.

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3

Thanks for the response. It is looking like I am just going to use Simplify3D to slice and use qidi's software to pass the gcode to the printer. If I ever get a better printer, I'll take another look at octoprint.

4

I just noticed that qidi's software stack is based on a version of Cura. As an owner of one of their printers, you are in your right to request the source of that software, and having that source would make it more feasible to support printing directly to the printer from other software in the future.

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5

And I would actually strongly recommend to do this to put them on the spot. If they use Open Source under a copyleft license, they have to share.

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6

Gave or allowed-you-to-copy-his-licensed-one?

But fair's fair: sure, Qidi should cough up the source for their Cura-derived slicer... but if you're going to use Simplify3D then pay them for it (assuming for a moment that this wasn't a Christmas gift). That $149 helps their developers keep the software working. What's good for them is good for you, the consumer.

7

The one he gave isn't the most legal. He was using that before he purchased a copy.

I'm still messing around and seeing what program I like. I'll support whatever software I end up using. I was thinking about checking Cura out as well.

If I were to request the source, how would I go about using it? I only took like one programming class in college. It wasn't something I had a talent for.

8

Cura is great (free) software. Even if you didn't code having the source code informs you about what's going on. Nearly daily on here I just walk through foosel's code to answer people's questions about how it works. Not having that code means that it's a black box and you really don't know how it behaves.

9

I have spent an absurd amount of time emailing with Qidi about remote print and was told that they had found Octoprint to be unstable to use. That translates to "Qidi firmware was so badly written that it was unstable with Octoprint." Qidi has no desire to have decent remote printing support. It is a shame really because they do have some pretty decent hardware. I even tried to interface to the serial port on the electronics board and that was non-functional to interface with.

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