VisPrinter: A new Web Interface based on pronsole

VisPrinter is a early experimental web interface on top of pronsole replacing Pronterface.

It is meant to provide a full UI for a RepRap machine to any browser. So anyone in a workshop can print from its own desktop without having to install the Printrun/Slic3r toolchain and serial drivers.

It can be downloaded here: [github.com]
README: [github.com]

Benefits:
- Print .stl files from any desktop over the net
- Can be served by a small embedded PC or router attached to the printer

Future benefits
- Slice on remote machines

There are many things missing for now, but it has already printed. This is in experimental state, so please report errors but not missing functions.

Feedback appreciated..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2012 11:32AM by dronus.

I was just looking for something like this. Looks great!

I haven't tested it so far, but I was wondering: is it possible to run this with Apache/Lighttpd/nginx using an uWSGI interface? Or do you have to run it as a standalone python webserver?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2012 06:41PM by Darhuuk.

This runs as a standalone server for now. I like it that way because it could be easily run on a local machine without large dependencies (the Slic3r has some huge heap of dependencies if the premade binaries do not fit however) and there are much less headaching configurable things that could interfere.

However, it should be no problem to set up a small proxy in your WWW server if you like to integrate it to some existing site. With nginx, this usually works out of the box by adding some lines to the config.

just some more info on PM's I had with dronus on the visprinter regarding using it on the web;



> Hi,
>
> I had a look at the web interface you made. is it
> possible to run this on a webserver ? I want to
> run it on my own server and slice on the go and be
> less pc dependant to slice stl files...
>

The VisPrinter features it's own server. If you already have a webserver running you can add VisPrinter if you have enough rights on your machine. You need to be able to run an application (webserver.py) and use a port other then 80 that is already occupied by your http server.

It is also possible to serve VisPrinter on port 80 under some subdomain, if your webserver (Apache, Nginx) has some proxy capabilities and can forward the request to some subdomain to VisPrinter's own server on another port.

Hope that helps, ask again if details are needed.




> Thanks for your reply. What do you think about the
> possibility in setting up a dedicated server to
> provide this as a service to multiple users.


If not concerning a physical printer, but just for slicing it is already possible. The server is multi threaded and uses a cookie to identify every user, so it should be no problem for several people slicing and previewing their models.

The thing that have to be added is a convenient way to download the created gcode, and to add personal config files, as the server was meant to be tied to one single printer. Features to come, some of them maybe in the next days. The productive version of VisPrinter is scheduled for some day in januar 2013, but I don't promise these features are included. So you may try to add them yourself. It's about some links and upload forms I think.

The printer control is currentlty not aware of multiple users, so do not connect a printer to the server that is used by several people. There is much work to do, as the printer could only be used by one at a time and needs some kind of queue or ticket system to serve several print jobs. However, up to today, the printer usually need physical care (cleaning the nozzle, removing the print after completion) so this feature is not urgent I think.

I've forked Dronus' repo on github and developed the software a lot more. My aim was to have the host running on a small Linux tablet (pengod700), so everything was optimised for touch.

A big thankyou to Dronus and Kliment for laying such a amazing foundation.

https://github.com/mlaws/VisPrinter