Touchscreen Upgrade for Printrbot Simple Metal

thingiverse

I have had this for a while, and I feel that it is quite practical. So here it is, the touchscreen upgrade to run Octoprint on your Printrbot Simple Metal! Check out what Octoprint is at http://octoprint.org/ UPDATE: (25/08/2016) New image based on jessie octopi 0.13.0, compatible with RPi3, brings back user access control, Octoprint 1.2.15, TouchUI 0.3.4 Parts Required I actually designed this to fit the 5" Touchscreen LCD by Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1596 The display adapter I use is the DPI TFT Kippah by Adafruit: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2453 Of course, you can use any other adapter; however, I find this the best option to fit inside your Simple Metal frame. Kippah touchscreen requires a micro-usb cable attached on the side and connected to the Pi USB port. You will need a relatively small cable for it to fit inside your frame. In my case, I use the pigtail micro-usb cable and take out the plastic case. The FPC extension cable is handy since you will not mount your pi right behind the LCD: https://www.adafruit.com/products/2098 And of course, for all of this to work, you will need a Raspberry Pi. I recommend using B+, or RPi2, or even better RPi3 for better performance and power handling (and the on-board wifi adapter). Optionally, get a WiFi dongle. You don't need this for RPi 3. If you plan to power your Pi from your printer, I suggest you get a 5V- 3A UBEC: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4319__TURNIGY_3A_UBEC_w_Noise_Reduction.html You need to somehow get the input port to your printer 12V power input (don't take it from the GPIO) and get the 5V output to your Pi micro-usb power input. There are 2-ways to do this: Get a micro-usb cable, strip down the cable, find the tiny power cable (red-black) and solder it to the UBEC. Get a micro-usb cable and the female usb port (solderable). Solder the usb port to the ubec and plug the micro-usb cable to the port (I did this). If you plan to connect your RPi to your Printrboard internally (no usb cable hanging outside the frame) then you will need an FTDI adapter: https://www.adafruit.com/products/954 Instructions: 1. Download the image from Dropbox at https://www.dropbox.com/s/4urgrp0eao62dcj/octopi-jessie-lite-0.13.0-kippah-touchscreen-backup.rar?dl=0 2. Write the image using Win32 Disk Imager (windows only): https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ 3. Or clone using gparted (for linux) 4. Default id: pi 5. Default password: raspberry 6. Default hostname: printrbot 7. Default login profile: printrbot 8. Default profile password: simplemetal After writing the image, open up the boot drive on your micro-sd card (just like using regular usb thumb drive), open up octopi-network.txt and fill in your wifi ssid and password. Plug in to your pi, then expand your file system using "sudo raspi-config" There are a few ways to access your print server. Find out your RPi ip address, then type it on your browser http://printrbot.local/ My image has avahi installed, which means if you use windows it should come out in the network window. Double click that and open it using your browser. PS: You should now safely upgrade to the latest version of Octoprint and TouchUI with this build.