Introducing 3D Printing with OctoPi

Guy Sheffer maintains “OctoPi”, a Raspbian (and thus Debian) based SD card image for the Raspberry Pi that already includes OctoPrint plus everything you need to run it:

OctoPrint plus its dependencies
MJPG-Streamer for live viewing of prints and time-lapse video creation, compatible with various USB webcams and the Raspberry Pi camera

Recommended hardware: Raspberry Pi 3B, 3B+, 4B, or Zero 2. Expect print artifacts and long loading times with other options, especially when adding a webcam or installing third-party plugins. Setups not using recommended hardware are not officially supported.

Please note that the Raspberry Pi Zero and Zero W are not recommended explicitly since severe performance issues were observed, caused by the WiFi interface when bandwidth is utilized (e.g. the webcam is streamed), negatively impacting printing quality. See also here. The Zero 2 however is recommended.

Installing OctoPi

OctoPi is available through the Raspberry Pi Imager, which you can use to download and setup OctoPi. You can install it yourself, or alternatively simply buy one of the available

Installing OctoPi using the Raspberry Pi Imager

🤚 Before you begin

Read and follow these instructions precisely.

If you haven’t already, download and install Raspberry Pi Imager on your computer
Find the OctoPi image under “Choose OS”, by selecting “Other Specific Purpose OS” > “3D printing” > “OctoPi” and then the “stable” version.
Open advanced options by clicking on the button with the gear, or by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+shift+x and then:
- Configure your wifi options: Set your SSID, password, and WiFi country.
- Change the system password in “Set username and password” by entering a new password to use for the system user “pi”. This is not the password you’ll use for logging into OctoPrint, but one that you’ll have to use to log into your Pi via SSH should you ever need to.
- Optionally: Change the configured timezone in “Set locale settings”
- Optionally: Change the hostname in “Set hostname”

Install the image to your SD card, then plug everything into your Raspberry Pi and boot it up. Do not format the SD card after installing, even if prompted to do so. This will break the installation, and you will have to start over!
Access OctoPrint from your browser via http://octopi.local or the hostname you chose (if your computer supports bonjour) or http://<your pi's ip address>. https is available too, with a self-signed certificate (which means your browser will warn you about it being invalid – it isn’t, it’s just not recognized by your browser).

Please also refer to OctoPi’s README, especially the “How to use it” section.

Alternative Initial Setup

If you decide against using the Raspberry Pi Imager, here are some alternative steps to get started:

Flash the image to your SD card through whatever alternative means you’ve chosen.
With the SD card still attached to your computer, set up the Wifi connection using the octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt file on the root of the installed card when using it like a thumb drive. Important: Do not use WordPad (Windows) or TextEdit (macOS X) for this; those editors are known to mangle the file, making the configuration fail. Use something like Notepad++, Atom or VSCode instead or at the very least heed the warnings in the file. If your computer doesn’t see the card right away after flashing, try ejecting and inserting it again. Do not format the SD card after installing, even if prompted to do so. This will break the installation, and you will have to start over! Please also take a look at the full WiFi setup guide in the FAQ that also includes troubleshooting tips.
Plug everything into your Raspberry Pi and boot it up
Log into your Pi via SSH (it is located at octopi.local if your computer supports bonjour or the IP address assigned by your router, the default username is pi, the default password is raspberry. Run sudo raspi-config. Once that is open, change the password via “Change User Password.”Optionally: Change the configured timezone via “Localization Options” > “Timezone”.Optionally: Change the hostname via “Network Options” > “Hostname”. Your OctoPi instance will then no longer be reachable under octopi. local, but rather the hostname you chose postfixed with .local, so keep that in mind. You can navigate in the menus using the arrow keys and Enter. To switch to selecting the buttons at the bottom, use Tab. You do not need to expand the filesystem; current versions of OctoPi do this automatically. You also do not need to manually enable the RaspiCam if you have one, that is already taken care of in the image as well.
Access OctoPrint through http://octopi.local (if your computer supports bonjour) or http://<your pi's ip address>. https is available too, with a self-signed certificate (which means your browser will warn you about it being invalid – it isn’t, it’s just not recognized by your browser).