I’ve had this blog for over a year now, but I’ve been having a hard time deciding what posts to make on here. Originally, I wanted to have here polished project write-ups, but I just ended up procrastinating them until I forgot. Everything on the internet is shiny and polished, unnaturally perfect, so I’ve decided to start making posts that are a bit more raw. One of those post types would be Dev Log: a post dropped on semi-regular intervals, where I will write about what I’ve been working on recently.
This past week I’ve worked on a series of small projects:
Remote printing via RPi
I have an amazing old printer from HP, LaserJet 1160, but it has no ability for remote printing. Printing is possible only by connecting to it via a cable, so I’ve decided to install CUPS server onto Raspberry Pi I had sitting on the table anyways. Now I can print from the phone or any device connected into our network.
However, the setup wasn’t smooth and there were a few issues I needed to sort out:
- Making printer public - I set up the printer via web interface, and I was making sure to share the printer. It appears that the CUPS interface has a bug here, as every time I checked the checkbox, the printer got unshared. It took a while trying to figure out why my PC can’t see the printer, as I was looking for the issue everywhere else.
- Random characters - I had random characters show up on bottom part of the page, it wasnt consistent, but it kept happening. The root cause appeared to be quite simple: I had two drivers fighting over the control of the printer, the generic driver usblp and the CUPS installed hpcups. I’ve not encountered the random characters since disabling the usblp on the Raspberry, so I am hoping there won’t be more surprises.
OctoPi for 3D Printing
We have a 3D printer that we use for odd projects and it gets annoying going to check on it all the time, so I installed OctoPi onto Raspberry Pi 4 I had laying around and set it up. As result I can now monitor the print via a camera, and don’t need to go get the SD card just to put new print files onto it. I can now do it all from comfort of the web UI.
I would like to make more improvements in the future, but I am still fully fleshing out technicalities:
- Moving printer into our storage, so we don’t keep it in our living space. This move will require it to have an enclosed space against dust, and more importantly a way to start and stop printer remotely (I am thinking some sort of smart socket controlled via RPi).
- Light solution - I will want to have consistent light on the print while it’s printing, so something that could be controlled via RPi would be suitable. I have a plenty of ring lights laying around so I believe I could cook something up.
- Longer cable strip for the camera. I feel like the one I have at the moment is a bit too short and doesnt allow me to look as much up as I would like to.
Now that I have made the print a bit more convenient, maybe our printer is going to be used more often than 3 times a year.
For reference, I’ve used these print files: RPi 4 case, camera arm and camera case.
OctoPi device
Dipping my toes into Meshtastic
I’ve seen terms MeshCore and Meshtastic around for a few months now and I’ve found the concept interesting. Initially I wanted to use some of my existing LoRa devices, but none of them are supported (I’ve been on and off messing with LoRa for a few years now, most of my devices I acquired over 5 years ago). So when I was ordering from Seeed recently, I grabbed some XIAOs that are supported by Meshtastic along with other things.
Why Meshtastic and not MeshCore?
Primarily I went with the popular choice, the people I follow mostly talked about Meshtastic. To be honest, until I started looking into it deeper, I thought MeshCore was a framework, and Meshtastic was the app within that framework. Another reason why I leaned towards Meshtastic was the discord, I found that the community for it was more active and feelt more friendly. It also seemed to me that Meshtastic had broader device support.
My Meshtastic nodes
I have two nodes at the moment that I am playing with. I have set up XIAO ESP32S3 with Wio-SX1262 and XIAO nRF52840 with Wio-SX1262. I have one extra Wio-SX1262 that I plan to use for a LoRa project. At the moment, I got as far as installing the firmware and doing some basic setup (bluetooth and I set up a channel for communication between the two nodes, and a public channel). I will need to play with it a bit more, as I havent spent much time with it yet, but I find the project exciting. At the moment, I appear to be the only meshtastic person in my area, but I think it will change with time.
My Meshtastic nodes