AstroPrint - Launching on Kickstarter, beta coming soon

Hi all,
We will be launching AstroPrint on Kickstarter this Tuesday (May 20th) and would love to have every reprapper that has ever existed to check it out and let us know what you think. Please feel free to post in this thread your questions and comments. We'll address them all! There is a little info at AstroPrint.com, but we want to let the RepRap community know a bit more about what we do.

AstroPrint is an end to end printing software solution that is open source and works with any desktop 3D printer that accepts gcode. You can think of it as an alternative to Repetier Host, Pronterface, or Octoprint, which allows you to slice and and print from any web enabled device (phones, tablets, or computers,) with a significantly more intuitive interface.

Tech basics: AstroPrint is a heavily modified fork of Octoprint and operates under the same open source licensing as Octoprint. The modifications go way beyond adding a new interface and include features such as cloud slicer integration and cloud stl/gcode organization. In addition, our cloud slicer uses Slic3r, wrapped in an API (other slicers will be added soon.) All of our services are free, however we will charge for people that decide they want more than 10GB file storage. This makes it totally free for anyone to use, unless they decide to store lots of files on the system.

On Kickstarter we will be offering an AstroBox, starting at $75, which uses a pcDuinoV2 (or pcDuino3S) to run our open source software. The software can be downloaded and run on a Raspberry Pi or Beagle Bone Black also. Once a printer is plugged into the box, the box manages the printer, you no longer need to connect to your computer. With a phone or tablet, you can connect to the box through the internet, or local wifi (if the internet is down.) When you need to slice, our cloud slicer takes care of it. When you need to save files, our cloud file storage takes care of that... It's all integrated together seamlessly.

Other things we are working on include: Automating custom slic3r configurations to optimize prints and reduce failed prints, grouping slicer settings to allow beginners to print with 1-click, and much more.

We would love to see AstroPrint software become a standard for operating open source printers. We will be reaching out to the RepRap community a lot in order to make sure we are building the solution that you indeed want. Please send us any and all of your suggestions and ideas!!!

What do you think? What questions come up for you?

Thanks,
Drew
AstroPrint.com
3DaGoGo.com


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2014 12:46PM by DTaylor.

This should be in the Crowdfunding section of the forum.

Also you should try integrating a good slicer like Kisslicer or Cura or Skeinforge.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Sorry about that! I didn't see the crowdfunding section, thanks for moving this over.

Cura is the next one to integrate and will be an option in the next month or so. Kisslicer has been mostly abandoned as a project and will likely not have much in the way of updates.

If there is enough demand for Skeinforge, we will happily put it in. So, far very few people have requested it. Cura is the one that everyone is pushing for next...

Kisslicer is actually back under development and has had a bunch of Beta versions released in the Google group over the last month. Although it would be harder to integrate since it does not have an API. You actually have to generate a profile in a folder with the executable and then invoke Kisslicer from the command line and it will use the config in the folder.

As for SF I do know that a lot of the hard core people still use it and most people have it as a backup for when the other slicers will just not do. Have a look at Skeinforge 50+ , it is under active development and has lots of updates.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Nice, I didn't know that Kisslicer was back! That's good to hear. The API is no problem for us, we built an API for Slic3r already. We actually use a similar approach as to what you mentioned above, fully automated.

Part of what we put in next will depend on who is using the system and how many people request various slicers. Specifically, we would love to partner up with printer manufacturers and begin putting in the features that they see working best with their newer printer models. Regardless, it's our intention to eventually have all these slicers integrated. They all work best in different situations...

~Drew

Hi All,
Just posting an update.

AstroPrint was funded in under 1 day and is now at 220% funding. Thanks to the awesome community that is supporting us!

If you haven't checked it out, please do so. If you have any questions about the software, service, or the team, please feel free to ask!

http://AstroPrint.com/Kickstarter

Thanks,
Drew