If you have taken up 3D printing, you know it can be both fun and frustrating at the same time. One common source of frustration is having to shuttle your Gcode files between your computer and the 3D printer. After all, older consumer 3D printers and even newer budget models lack network connectivity.

That’s where your Raspberry Pi and a handy utility called OctoPrint come into play. OctoPrint provides a web interface for your 3D printer, allowing you to control and monitor every aspect of the printer and your print jobs. Together with the Raspberry Pi, you’ll have an OctoPi. Let’s dive in and show how to set it up.

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What you need to build an OctoPi

If you want to use Raspberry Pi and OctoPrint to control and monitor your 3D printer, you’ll need a few items:

Raspberry Pi

OctoPrint recommends Raspberry Pi models 3B, 3B+, 4B, or Zero 2W. While not yet officially supported, recent nightly builds of the OctoPi image have been shown to work on Raspberry Pi 5.

Your PC or Mac

You’ll flash the image of the OctoPi OS to your SD card from your computer.

Raspberry Pi Imager

You can also use Balena Etcher, but the official Raspberry Pi Imager software will automatically download and help you configure OctoPi for your Raspberry Pi.

3D printer

Of course, you’ll need a 3D printer that works with OctoPrint. Bambu Labs 3D printers can be particularly problematic, but support for them is in development.

Power adapter for the Pi

You’ll need a supported power adapter for your Raspberry Pi.

MicroSD card

Even an 8GB micro SD card will work unless you plan to queue many print jobs. You’ll also need an SD card reader and microSD card adapter.

USB cable

Be sure to match the type of connection for both your 3D printer and your Raspberry Pi. A few 3D printers use USB-C, but most use USB-A, USB-B, mini USB, or micro USB. Your Raspberry Pi uses USB-A.

Installing OctoPi on your Raspberry Pi

Once you’ve gathered what you need, it’s time to set it up.

The steps below use a prebuilt operating system image called OctoPi, but you can also download OctoPrint by itself and build it on your Raspberry Pi. The method below is much easier, though.

  1. At your computer, insert your micro SD card and launch Raspberry Pi Imager.
  2. Choose your device. Note that if you are using a Raspberry Pi 5, you may need to download a nightly build for OctoPi.
  3. Under Choose OS, select Other specific-purpose OS > 3D printing > OctoPi.
  4. Click one of OctoPi (stable) or OctoPi (new camera stack).
  5. Click Choose Storage and then choose your SD card.
  6. Click Next.
  7. Click No in the dialog asking if you want to apply OS customization settings.
  8. Confirm you want to erase the data on your SD card and flash the OctoPi image.
  9. After the image is flashed, make sure the SD card is mounted as a USB device and configure your WiFi in octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt.

Boot your Raspberry Pi from the SD card and log into it. If you don’t have it connected to a monitor, you can log in via SSH at octopi.local or the IP address assigned by your router. The default username is “pi” and the default password is “raspberry” (without the quotation marks.)

Once logged in, you need to make some configuration changes. Run the following command:

sudo raspi-config

Once it’s opened, you should do the following:

  • Change the password via Change User Password.
  • Navigate to Localization Options and change the configured timezone.
  • If you wish, change the hostname via Network Options > Hostname.

Setting up your 3D printer in OctoPrint

Now it’s time to get your 3D printer configured in OctoPrint. With your Raspberry Pi plugged Into your 3D printer, open a web browser on your computer. Go to your octopi web page using https://octopi.local or the IP address.

The setup wizard will walk you through setting up your first OctoPi instance. Once done, you’ll be able to send print jobs to your 3D printer remotely, view their status, access the feed from an attached camera, and more.

Other ways to get OctoPrint

There are several other ways to set up an OctoPrint server. Essentially, almost any computer you can imagine can run OctoPrint. Here are some other popular options.

Operating System/Platform

Link

Docker

You can download the official OctoPrint Docker image. It's maintained by Brian Vanderbush and his team on GitHub.

Linux

Use the Linux deployment script maintained by Paul Paukstelis on GitHub or follow the manual installation instructions at the OctoPrint official website.

macOS

Installation instructions are available on the OctoPrint forums.

Orange Pi

Obico maintains an image for the Orange Pi 3 LTS and Orange Pi Zero 2.

Windows

A Windows installer is available on GitHub, maintained by jneilliii.