Using Octoprint with the Sovol SO-1 Plotter Printer

November 25, 2021

Using Octoprint with the Sovol SO-1 Plotter Printer

I installed Octoprint on a spare raspberry pi model 3B. Octoprint enables using my home wireless network to transfer files from my computer to the raspberry pi and the sending G code to the plotter, rather than having to print from the SD card. It's pretty easy now to set up Octoprint now with the Raspberry Pi Imager, relative to the old way of doing it.

I made some changes to the config.yaml file, to change the tab order and remove some of the tabs that are not relevant with using a plotter printer.

I added a custom control for the Pen to raise or lower it.

Here are the additions I made to the config.yaml file to change the appearance look like the photo above:

appearance:

color: violet

components:

disabled:

tab:

- plugin_gcodeviewer

- timelapse

- temperature

order:

tab:

- control

- terminal

- gcodeviewer

- timelapse

- temperature

controls:

- children:

- command: M280P0S30

- command: M280P0S20

webcam:

webcamEnabled: false

The raspberry pi I am using, I bought on eBay 1-2 years ago, it came with power supply, sd card, and acrylic case with 5v fan installed. I formatted the SD card and then used the Raspberry Pi Imager to install Octoprint. I set it up "headlessly", I used the option to configure wireless network and ssh access before flashing the SD card. The only issue I am having is that sometimes octoprint is giving me a message about a low voltage on the raspberry pi. There are only two possible power draws off the pi, which are the cooling fan and the usb to the plotter. I unplugged the fan terminals from the pi and soldered them to the power leads of a spare usb cable and plugged it into 5v usb power supply.

I carefully cut into the cord of the micro usb cable from the raspberry pi to Sovol SO-1, and cut the red 5V power wire and sealed the endings and wrapped with tape so the raspberry pi can't power the plotter.

I was still seeing the low voltage comment with the aforementioned changes, so then I swapped out the power supply and it seemed better for a while but then is doing it again occasionally. It doesn't seem to prevent printing so I am going to just ignore it.

I looked at the syslog in /var/log with tail -n 100 syslog and it was getting bloated with the following information over and over:

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol root: Starting USB webcam

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: starting application

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: MJPG Streamer Version: git rev: 5554f42c352ecfa7edaec6fc51e507afce605a34

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: Using V4L2 device.: /dev/video10

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: Desired Resolution: 640 x 480

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: Frames Per Second.: 10

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: Format............: JPEG

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: TV-Norm...........: DEFAULT

Nov 25 17:28:49 sovol MJPG-streamer [7170]: init_VideoIn failed

Nov 25 17:28:50 sovol systemd[1]: webcamd.service: Succeeded.

Nov 25 17:28:50 sovol systemd[1]: Started the OctoPi webcam daemon with the user specified config.

Nov 25 17:28:51 sovol systemd[1]: webcamd.service: Service RestartSec=1s expired, scheduling restart.

Nov 25 17:28:51 sovol systemd[1]: webcamd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 8929.

Nov 25 17:28:51 sovol systemd[1]: Stopped the OctoPi webcam daemon with the user specified config.

Nov 25 17:28:51 sovol systemd[1]: Starting the OctoPi webcam daemon with the user specified config...

I found a reddit post in which a user described running octoprint without a webcam experiencing this issue and recommended using the following commands as the solution, which fixed the problem for me:

sudo systemctl disable webcamd.service

sudo systemctl stop webcamd.service

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