Hello 3D Printing Friends! Today on the BV3D Channel I'll show you how to
install and use the OctoKlipper plugin for OctoPrint, to make it easier
to use the Klipper firmware. Stick around and we'll get into it, right after this.
I'm Bryan, and you... are watching BV3D!
Hi everyone, welcome back! Before we get started,
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when I release new stuff. Okay, so in a previous video we installed the Klipper
firmware on our Anet A8 3D printer and its associated Raspberry Pi. And when
we did that, we had to spend quite a bit of time in a command-line interface,
typing lots of commands to get Klipper installed, and to get a basic
configuration in place for the Anet A8. By comparison, OctoPrint has a much
friendlier user interface. It's nicely organized, and you can do a lot with just
a couple of clicks. We can bring the advantage of that easier-to-use
interface to the task of working with Klipper, and we do that by installing a
plug-in in OctoPrint. That plug-in is OctoKlipper, and we'll
install it from OctoPrint's Settings screen. So let's get on the computer,
and get into OctoPrint.
We'll open a new web browser window, and connect to octopi.local.
Then, we'll click the Wrench icon to get into OctoPrint's Settings panel.
In the OctoPrint section on the left, click "Plugin Manager." In the main part
of the Settings panel, click the "Get More" button. Then we'll search the repository
for Klipper. Now, click the Install button on OctoKlipper.
Once it finishes, it alerts us that we need to restart, so click Restart Now,
then confirm the restart command. OctoPrint will restart, and eventually
you will get a Please Reload message. When you do, click the Reload Now button.
Now, OctoKlipper changes the look of
OctoPrint a little bit, and it makes it
easier to work with Klipper. For instance, you'll notice a new Klipper tab over
here on the tab bar, and the Connection panel at the top left corner of
OctoPrint has been replaced by an OctoKlipper panel, with a Connect and
Disconnect button, and quick access to Klipper macro commands on buttons, such
as Emergency Stop. Restarting OctoPrint disconnected us from Klipper, so
click the Connect button to reconnect to Klipper. Now that we're connected, let's
go take a peek inside that new Klipper tab. And here we've got some handy
buttons for common Klipper-related tasks. You can get Klipper's status, we have a
couple of restart options; we can do a Host Restart, which resets Klipper and
reloads its configuration; or we can do a Firmware Restart, which does the same
thing as a Host Restart, but it also clears any errors related to the part of
Klipper that lives over on the printer. We have some Tools buttons; there's
Assisted Bed Leveling, which moves the nozzle to specific points on the bed so
we can adjust the leveling knobs; there is a PID tuning button to perform a PID
calibration; there is a Coordinate Offset button, so we can specify an offset for
subsequent g-code commands... Does anybody have any thoughts about a good use for
that? If you do, leave a comment. We can get a Performance Graph, so that we can
see what Klipper's been up to, and this could help us debug Klipper issues. We
have a place for Macro buttons; here's the E-Stop macro button, which is the
same one as in the OctoKlipper panel over here on the left. Now, some of these
functions need to be set up, so let's go explore what's available in OctoPrint's
Settings panel, and we'll click the Wrench icon to get there. In the plugins
category on the left, click OctoKlipper to show its settings. And we have
four tabs here. We have a Basic tab, Macros, Bed Leveling, and Klipper
Configuration. In the Basic tab, we can specify the serial port. And remember,
Klipper uses /tmp/printer. We have a checkbox to
replace the Connection panel, and that's checked by default, which is why the
Connection panel was replaced with an OctoKlipper panel. We can specify the
path to Klipper's configuration, and that conceivably would give us the ability to
switch between different configurations fairly easily. And we can specify whether
to perform a Restart or a Firmware Restart when Klipper's configuration
changes. In the Macros tab, we can see the setup for the E-Stop macro button.
A Macro button is a grouping of one or more Klipper or G-code commands, and you
give these a name, and then choose whether they appear in the Klipper tab,
or the sidebar. So with one click, you can quickly perform a task without having to
remember all of commands. The Bed Leveling tab helps us perform a manual
bed leveling operation, and there are a few values we need to provide. There's
Probe Height, and if you're leveling with a piece of paper, it says, set this value
to the paper thickness. A value of 0.1 millimeters is good here. Probe Lift
specifies how high the printer raises the nozzle before moving to the next
point. Probe Feed Rate Z specifies how fast to move the Z-axis while performing
our leveling operations, and Feed Rate X/Y specifies how fast to move the X
and Y axes while we're leveling. Then, we come to probe points, and there's only one
point set up, and it's at X=0 and Y=0, which really isn't very useful. Let's add
three more points, and then we'll set their coordinates to represent the four
corners of the bed. All right, so let's give them some useful names and
coordinates. The bed size on the Anet A8 is 220 by 220, and I think probing 30
millimeters in from each corner will do nicely. So, we'll set these as follows: 0
we'll call Left Front, and we'll specify it as 30 on the X and 30 on the Y. Point
1, we'll call Right Front, and we'll set that at 190 on X and 30 on Y. That 190
millimeter value is the 220 millimeter of the bed, size minus 30 millimeters. We'll
set this point to be Left Rear, and we'll set that at X=30 and Y=190.
And we'll set this point as Right Rear, and we'll set that at 190 and 190.
Let's click the Save button to save these values. Now doing so closes the
settings panel so let's click the wrench icon again to get back into settings, and
then get back into OctoKlipper's settings. And then we're back again in
Bed Leveling. So the last tab in OctoKlipper settings is Klipper
Configuration, and this is the whole reason I wanted to show you this plug-in.
This lets you directly edit Klipper's configuration file, and this is a very
powerful feature. But remember, with great power comes great responsibility. If you
want to be cautious about things, I recommend copying the entire contents of
the configuration, pasting it into a text file, and saving it on your computer. That
way, if you accidentally mess up, you've got a known-good configuration you can
paste back in to get up and running again. Now the reason I thought this was
important enough to make an entire video about is this: As we start tuning Klipper
to try and get the best performance on the Anet A8, we're going to be editing
Klipper's configuration file. And having the ability to dive right in here and
make a quick change, rather than having to open an SSH client and log into the
Raspberry Pi, will really make things easier. Now, I'm comfortable doing things
in a command-line interface, but a lot of people aren't. And if there's a tool
that'll make it easier for more people to get something done, why not install it?
I mean the whole point of computers is they're supposed to make things easier,
right? Right. Okay, so when we want to make adjustments to Klipper's configuration,
this is where we're going to do it. Because not only does this make it easy
to edit the configuration, it also takes care of restarting Klipper
whenever we save changes to the configuration, so those changes will take
effect right away. Now, I don't want to make any changes to Klipper's
configuration in THIS video, though, so let's close the settings panel, and go
back to the Klipper tab in the main OctoPrint user panel. Because what I DO want to do
is try out the Assisted Bed Leveling. So let's click the Assisted Bed Leveling
button. Ah, cool. There's the probe points that we set up earlier. So let's click
the Start button, which will move through each of the probe points in turn.
And as the printer moves to each probe point, we can adjust the height as needed.
Once we have one point set, we can click Next to move on to the next probe point.
And we'll keep doing that until we've got all four probe points adjusted. Now, I
only made one lap around the bed, but it's a good idea to go around multiple
times, because as you adjust each corner it changes the other ones just a little
bit. Just keep running through the process until you're not having to
adjust the knobs anymore. For me, this takes about 3 or 4 times
around the bed. So that's the OctoKlipper plugin. it was easy to install,
it's easy to use, and it'll make it a lot easier to adjust Klipper's configuration
in future episodes. And speaking of episodes, this one's just
about done. I do hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please give it a thumbs
up. If you didn't, give it a thumbs down, but either way let me know your thoughts
down in the comments. If you liked the content that I'm producing, consider
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down in the description. Well, I'm gonna go experiment a little more with Klipper,
and then I'm going to print something cool. You do the same, and I'll see you
next time!