Is there a way from cura to have octoprint take the gcode upload, store it on the SD Card on my printer controller, and then trigger the print? So even if my pi overheats, or something bad happens, as long as the controller is running, printing still happens?
I know I can upload the file manually, but I want it the workflow to just "work" instead of saving to file, uploading manually, then triggering the print.
Thanks for any help.
Yes, though I would not recommend it.
In Cura, using the OctoPrintPlugin which is available from the Toolbox, you can select an option to store the gcode file on SD in the Connect to OctoPrint dialog.
The reason I don't recommend it is that it takes extremely long to copy a gcode file from OctoPrint to the SD card on the printer. This is not OctoPrint specifically doing something in a slow way, but inherent to using the serial port of the printer. Depending on the complexity of the gcode it can take almost as long as printing the file. During this time there is no feedback in Cura about what is going on; the upload will seem to have succeeded, but there's nothing visible in OctoPrint yet because the file is still transfering to the sd card.
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I'd like to say that though it is not recommended, I am doing it for a different reason that showed up that I was not expecting. For me, I was into a 8 hour print and at hour 4, for reasons I have yet to figure out, the raspberry pi decided to reboot. As a result, I lost those 4 hours. I plan to try the save the SD card and run from there to avoid that from happening again. Yes it will take a while to save but in the long game, I think I will come out ahead.
Raspberry Pis don’t normally reboot spontaneously. Make sure your power supply is stable enough. But if you really want to use the “upload to sd” functionality, that’s why I kept it in: as a non-recomended option.
I this had happened to me, I'd spend some time figuring out why the RPi decided to reboot and fix it. My RPi has had no issues and has completed numerous 20+ hour prints. Uptime on the RPi is measured in months.
If, on the other hand, you want to primarily print from the printer's SD card, then I'd consider a WiFi SD card like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0799JX7SW and skip OctoPrint entirely.