Laptop control of PolyPrinters?

3D Fabrication
#1

I brought my new to me laptop w/ me last time I was at the space, it was a very productive day for me. I know and understand it is against policy to allow personal computer to control polyprinters directly, could I please get permission and help setting this feature up on on my new computer?

Thank You.

I was able to design and print a wheel chair cup holder for my old chair and several specialty hooks for my laptop bag. Normally this takes several visits to the space to accomplish. An excellent day indeed.

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#2

I asked for this recently and was explicitly told no, that is not possible. That being said, that’s a policy that is one committee vote away from changing. If you feel strongly about this, I suggest attending the next 3D Fab committee meeting and see if enough other members at the meeting agree that there should be a path to getting that access.

I feel like there should always be a documented path to access of very nearly anything that DMS owns. It might not be easy to earn/prove you can be trusted with that access, but there should at least be a process for getting there.

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#3

Agreed, if you don’t ask…

#4

That was exactly 100% my thought at the time when I asked. I just haven’t found the time since then to make it to a 3D Fab meeting.

#5

I don’t think its even an issue of trust. Its a matter of resources and expected support.

There are many moving parts to it, if it doesn’t work right you need support. Support means a volunteer has to take time to diagnose, fix, etc. This is unreasonable to expect. We don’t have the time or resources. It is impractical to do as well from a hardware configuration perspective. Anytime someone makes changes/moves hardware etc, There is no way of knowing that. You open up the wild wild west of problems when you move outside known good configurations.

#6

On the flip side… someone (and by that, I really mean a group of someones) has to have access to it. Those people are thus trusted that they’re not going to break it, abuse it, or leave it in some weird state.
There should always be a documented process by which any given member can get access (or a certain level of access) to any given gear.
Now, in order to keep it all under control, a committee can decide that the total number of active members with certain access might be limited. There’s some decent reasoning to that - although it does introduce questions of definition around what constitutes an “active” member. Also, and this is critically important, that number should always be greater than 1, and ideally, it should be at least 3-4, just so you don’t have a group of people quit/drift away and leave the committee in a lurch.

#7

Everyone has access to it, via octoprint…

What you are asking for is a non-standard configuration which is inevitably going to want support. Its unreasonable.

#8

You can’t control it via OctoPrint unless you’re coming from certain IP addresses. You can only observe. I don’t see how being able to cue up prints or pause print jobs from my own laptop is inherently more dangerous or unstable than using the computer(s) in 3D Fab.

The more general access argument I’m making is volunteer-organization-oriented. For any given job at DMS, there should always be a group of people who can do it. That way when something needs to get done, it doesn’t just fall to one or two people. The description of those teams, and the ability to join those teams (when there is space available) should always be documented. That’s literally all I’m saying.