Its_All.Lost
Because hope just breeds everlasting misery…

Spoolman on OpenNept4une

OpenNept4une Spoolman

Spoolman is a self-hosted web service designed to help you efficiently manage your 3D printer filament spools and monitor their usage. It acts as a centralized database that seamlessly integrates with popular 3D printing software like OctoPrint and Klipper/Moonraker. When connected, it automatically updates spool weights as printing progresses, giving you real-time insights into filament usage.

 

I just discovered Spoolman the other day by pure accident. Read about it quickly in a comment on some social media platform and instantly had to look it up. It looks pretty sweet. In the past I have never really needed much organization for my filament. I only had a few rolls of a few colors and did not print very heavily. Since getting the Elegoo Neptune 4 Max I have dumped rolls into the printer. I now find myself with a bunch of half used rolls of filament and if I want to use them I have to eyeball how much is left. Yes my spools have meter and gram indicators but that’s still a rough guess. Spoolman takes the guesswork out of it all.

If you have a printer running Klipper you can probably install and use Spoolman. If you have a printer like an Elegoo Neptune 4 with Klipper – you can’t. Elegoo did something to the firmware that makes it so you cannot update with the current versions out there. Nor can you update the boards OS without breaking things I have read. Moonraker needs to be updated to use Spoolman. There is a procedure I have found for updating Moonraker on the Neptune but I HAVE NOT TRIED IT. I posted it over here on my other post but I will reference it here also. This was my push to install OpenNept4une.

This is my guide/what I did to get Spoolman on my Neptune 4 Max with OpenNept4une.

[https://github.com/Donkie/Spoolman]

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OpenNept4une

OpenNept4une

If you have an Elegoo Neptune 4 series printer and are in the Elegoo Facebook group you may have heard of OpenNept4une by now. If not, you have now. From what I can tell there are two current thoughts about the Elegoo Neptune 4 series printers. One – the printer has a bunch of flaws and just won’t print properly and it is due to Elegoo’s touch of the Klipper software and installing OpenNept4une will resolve all of these issues. Two – the printer is fine and works fine, but you want community Klipper and to be able to update the software without things breaking. You want to be able to add things and be more up to date following the community with its version of Klipper.

I have not had any issues with my Neptune 4 Max for the few months I’ve owned it, I have printed about 20 rolls of PETG so far. But I noticed Elegoo’s Klipper is a few versions behind and they don’t offer updates much. There are a few things I would like to get play with and get working (Spoolman) and I would like to be able to use KIAUH. Plus I like to tinker. With a stock Neptune you cannot update the OS either, which I don’t like. Anyway, I decided to take the OpenNept4une plunge and I documented my process.

The Wiki/install guide on the OpenNept4une GitHub is fantastic. You can head over there and you should be able to follow that guide, it’s a bit more technical so I decided to write up what I did. I have a Neptune 4 Max so all of these instructions here on my blog are for the Max. They may or may not be the same and/or work for other Neptune 4 printers I have no idea. There are probably other steps for other printers, check the Wiki – you have been warned.

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Spaghetti Detective (Obico) on the Neptune 4 Max

Neptune and Obico

I have been using the Neptune 4 Max for a little over a month now. Love the printer, but it can misbehave. I have been printing for a few years now and I can count on one hand how many spaghetti monsters I have printed. That number has already been dwarfed with the addition of my N4M. While doing some research on why and how to stop it I came across the Spaghetti Detective (renamed Obico). I have heard of this many years ago and just never had a use for it, plus it costs money. I did a little more looking this time and found out you can self-host the platform to use the detective. No more paying for it. I like free. I should note that Obico does have a free tier, but it only provides 10hours of AI crunching detection.

Here’s how I installed Obico/Spaghetti Detective on my Neptune 4 Max. You should be able to follow Obico’s installation instructions and just adjusting the file paths but just in case I wrote up how I did it. I have a small Linux server (an Intel NUC) that sits in my office and runs all of my goodies. Anything that needs to run 24/7 or be accessible at all times lives there. Unfortunately while a Raspberry Pi is great for most things Obico states that they do not have enough power to run the AI software. A more robust piece of hardware is required, any old computer or laptop should work. They did just release the Pi5 so I am curious if that would work. If the machine has an NVIDIA card in it even better.

Obico released a small guide to get you started with Obico and the Neptune 4 Max with the cloud. These directions will get your printer setup for Obico. There are similar instructions below on how I did it for the self-hosted version of Obico.

[https://www.obico.io/blog/elegoo-neptune-4-and-obico-ai-3d-printing-revolution/]

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Elegoo Neptune 4 Max

Elegoo Neptune 4 Max

(UPDATED)

Let me start all of this with I am not an engineer nor an expert at 3D printing. This is all just shit that I have picked up over the years, read about or came across. I just want to spread some information and maybe help someone. Try the following at your own risk, I am not responsible for what you do. Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

 

Intro

A month or so ago I upgraded my trusty old Monoprice Maker Select v2.1 to a Elegoo Neptune 4 Max. Wow. I’ve been printing non stop. This thing is a beast! Its freaking huge and it prints fast! My Monoprice is still going strong, and I actually gifted it to my son-in-law, but I needed a bigger build platform and I wanted speed. It was down to an Anycubic Kobra 2 Max or the Elegoo Neptune 4 Max. If you do your research you will find tons of posts of people that got the N4M and hated it, to return it and get the Kobra 2 Max. With just as many people who did the opposite and ended up sending the Kobra 2 Max back to get a Neptune 4 Max. I was sold on the fact that it runs Klipper. It may be an Elegoo version of Klipper but it is Klipper. There are people working on OpenNept4une, a firmware replacement for Elegoo’s Klipper. I have also heard that someone is working on a pure Debian version of community Klipper. That would be fantastic. Unfortunately this requires buying a USB to eMMC adapter to flash the machine which I don’t have. I have not done this yet and I am not sure if I will. But it is an option. You can find more information on the Elegoo Discord. Some are also upgrading the main board to something like a BTT Manta and Pi TFT50. One of the things I’ve heard when playing with the alternate firmware(s) is you may lose the functionality of the touchscreen, no bueno.

If you are new to printing or this is your first don’t expect a nice fat user manual or handbook to walk you through. You are going to have to survive off a collection of online help. Don’t expect to get a ton of super helpful customer support from a company in China like Elegoo. You are much better off on their Discord or in a Facebook group, and websites.

Even with my knowledge of the past few years it took me almost two full rolls of filament to get it dialed in. But now it prints beautifully every time, and fast. So expect to be tweaking your profile for a bit and doing lots of bed leveling and printing lots of first layer sheets and benchys along with XYZCubes. Run the tests, it helps.

The following is a mash up of some tips I have tried and figured out, or I have read about and found online.

Some of these steps may seem tedious or you just don’t want to do them, but it will save you time, headache, and filament – which is money. When I first started out for the longest time I never wanted to “waste” time with the calibration prints. Trust me you waste more time by not doing them. Orca makes it easy now anyway.

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OctoPrint-TFT on a Raspberry Pi

octoprint-tft

So I have been seeing the new kid on the block pop up a lot recently, no not that shitty fucking band. This is a new “plugin” for the famous and awesome OctoPrint, OctoPi actually – OctoPrint-TFT. I have seen the screenshots and it is looking slick I must say. A while back I tried to use the OctoPrint TouchUI plugin and didn’t have much luck with it, in the end as the Pi I had at the time was a lower model and I just found the responsiveness just too slow. Plus this gives it a nice TFT feel like it was stock and meant to be. Le’s try it. I am gonna use the same waveshare 3.5″ LCD screen I had before but this time a newer Raspberry Pi 3B+. So I wont need a WiFi dongle this time either cause its built-in.

 

Parts used

  • Raspberry Pi 3 B+
  • Waveshare 3.5″ LCD TFT screen
  • A micro SD card of course
  • Power supply and cord for the Pi
  • USB cable to connect the Pi to the printer
  • A 3D printer lol
  • A computer with some sort of SSH program or a screen and keyboard/mouse to work directly off the Pi (might work I am not sure, I used a terminal on my mac and SSH’d into the Pi).

 

Let’s Party

Let’s follow the directions from the Github page and see what happens?

After installing a fresh copy of OctoPi v0.16 I started the Github directions.

 

The file is actually “/etc/octoprint-tft-environment” not the location.

sudo nano /etc/octoprint-tft-environment
(this tidbit copied form the github page)

The basic configuration is handled via environment variables, if you are using the  .deb package you can configure it at  /etc/octoprint-tft-environment.

  • OCTOPRINT_CONFIG_FILE – Location of the OctoPrint’s config.yaml file. If empty the file will be searched at the  pi home folder or the current user. Only used for locally installed OctoPrint servers.
  • OCTOPRINT_HOST – OctoPrint HTTP address, example  http://localhost:5000, if OctoPrint is locally installed will be read from the config file.
  • OCTOPRINT_APIKEY – OctoPrint-TFT expects an API key to be supplied. This API key can be either the globally configured one or a user specific one if “Access Control”. if OctoPrint is locally installed will be read from the config file.
  • OCTOPRINT_TFT_STYLE_PATH – Several themes are supported, and style configurations can be done through CSS. This variable defines the location of the application theme.
  • OCTOPRINT_TFT_RESOLUTION – Resolution of the application, should be configured to the resolution of your screen, for example  800x480. By default  480x320.

So go to the browser on your working machine that you use and go to the Pies IP address and go thru the OctoPrint setup fun. Once done grab an API key from the config menu on OctoPrint and lets edit that config file for the OctoPrint-TFT.

Do a find -name "config.yaml" on your Pi and you will find the location of yours. Add that to the config. Host should be http://localhost . The API you grabbed from the config menu slap that where it needs to go. I left the last two alone.

It has come a long way since the last time I tried to get this screen to work. This time its is really freaking easy!

This should install with the screen to boot with the bottom being the power plug, if you want it the other way do this instead

Reboot your Raspberry Pi and make sure you get video on your LCD.

If your screen is not rotated correctly with the above command still, do the following.

And change the line for your display to add :rotate=270 as shown below

The Pi rebooted after downloading some files and holy shit! The screen is working, well it showed the boot up sequence and a login prompt. Let’s get touch working and the desktop.

sudo reboot

Let’s see?

Boot up sequence and…login prompt. Ugh. sudo raspi-config to desktop? That loads and wants lightdm, so no. TFT wants xserver, so its gonna get xserver. Lets Google and I mead Reddit. Google didn’t have shit, too new still. Found it.

Let’s try this.

He has an extras step after installing OctoPrint-TFT.

Lastly we need to remove the 99-fbturbo.conf file from our Xorg directory he says.

Now on reboot OctoPrint-TFT should load and start attempting to connect says he?

Fucken eh right it did! If you see the Octoprint image but the error says

Unexpected error: Get /api/connection: unsupported protocol scheme

As mentioned earlier I found out on the Github issues page it was mentioned there to add “http://” to the config file instead of just localhost. So make sure you did that.

If you see the “Connecting to OctoPrint” and it never goes away, don’t wait too long! It simply means it has no connection to a 3D printer at that moment. You MUST plug it in for the TFT to do its job and actually work. Incredibly confusing I know. Hopefully they’ll fix that soon, and change the message soon.

After playing with it for a few minutes (no actual printing done) I find it pretty neat, and may possibly use it in the future if my LCD screen ever loses functionality for some reason. I could disable the control boxes screen lets say and enable more features in Marlin, after I did upgrade my firmware. But I am not too sure. Requiring the tethered connection to the Pi is a drawback for me, thats way more plugs sticking out of a screen than I would like. If I had the 7″ screen to hide the goop maybe, but this wasn’t designed for those. It was perfect size on the 480×320 I ave.

Or if I do some crazy new board installed over the Melzi and I don’t have a screen. I could use this. I wanted to try Klipper out and that loses the screen but I don’t think there is support for it just yet. I am not willing to try it out at this point in time.

But that was my trick to get OctoPrint-TFT to work on my Waveshare 3.5″ TFT screen and Raspberry Pi 3 B+. Hope it helps.