{"id":1425,"date":"2014-01-30T21:57:46","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T01:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/?p=1425"},"modified":"2023-11-24T16:48:53","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T20:48:53","slug":"printrbot-simple-software-setup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lowtek.ca\/roo\/2014\/printrbot-simple-software-setup\/","title":{"rendered":"Printrbot Simple – Software setup"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post picks up right after you’ve finished all the steps to building your Printrbot Simple <\/a>and turn it on and plug it into your computer for the first time.<\/p>\n

There is an official guide<\/a> you should follow – and it is worth reading through. I took some notes along the way and will share those here. There is also a forum post<\/a> which covers setting things up that is worth reviewing as well.<\/p>\n

As my home desktop is Linux (Mint<\/a> 15 Olivia at the moment) following the official guide was a bit different than documented. They cover Windows and OSX, but the software is supported on Linux too.<\/p>\n

First up you’ll want\u00a0the mono-complete<\/a> package installed as the RepetierHost software is .net based and the mono package<\/a> provides support for that on Linux.<\/p>\n

Then download the RepetierHost<\/a> software and\u00a0run the configureFirst.sh script (it will want to sudo and prompt for the password).<\/p>\n

The printer communicates with the computer via a USB serial connection. On my system the USB serial device shows up as \/dev\/ttyACM0<\/code>. However, regular users can’t talk to this device – so we can run as root OR we can add our user to the serial group. I found a helpful blog post<\/a> that explained how to do this – just one line:<\/p>\n

$ a=`whoami`; sudo usermod -aG dialout $a<\/code><\/p>\n

As there is a sudo in the command, expect to be asked for the password unless you’ve very recently run a sudo operation. You’ll either have to log out and back in to enable access, or simply reboot.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

Now we adjust the printer settings as per above, and we should be in business. At this point I was connected to my printer! Very exciting to have software control of some hardware I put together.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, reading the RepetierHost manual <\/a>on installation probably would have saved me some effort I spent searching around to solve the USB serial problem.<\/p>\n

Referring to the official manual<\/a>\u00a0on page 9 \u00a0– “Configure Repetier Printer Settings”<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

We’ve already covered the Connection tab, so now we’re onto the Printer tab as per above.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

Then the Printer Shape tab.<\/p>\n

At this point we’re done with the printer settings and want to configure Slicr which has a tab visible on the main RepetierHost screen. Go there, and click on Configure.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

The Configure button we want is the top most in the screenshot, the lower button is for configuration of Skeinforge which we won’t be using at all.<\/p>\n

This should launch a wizard to which we’ll answer the following questions:<\/p>\n