SOLVED Cura Pause at Height Not Working on Ender 3 Pro

[garypuppa 0]

On 3/20/2024 at 8:46 PM, Slashee_the_Cow said:

Almost every Ender behaves differently. The common link is that they all do something wrong. Just please tell me you've tried using your own card, the ones Creality provides are only good for super slo-mo shots of what happens when you hit various gadgets with a sledgehammer.

Yes, I tried using my own high quality SD card in the printer. It had the same issues as the Ender supplied SD card.

"Almost every Ender behaves differently": This is good to know and explains why various solutions work for some people and not other Ender users. That is why I listed my printer model and the version of firmware I'm running.

 

On 3/20/2024 at 8:46 PM, Slashee_the_Cow said:

I advise against printing over USB in Cura though: it's a legacy feature which is no longer maintained. If you have to print over USB, I recommend using currently maintained software designed for it like OctoPrint (especially if you can run it on its own device, I have a Raspberry Pi dedicated to it running a system called OctoPi hooked up to my printer).

On my Ender-3 V2 Neo and Ender-3 V3 SE, M0 works as intended if you're printing from the SD card. But I don't have a touchscreen, just a knob. Over USB it doesn't and I have to manually make it continue (by sending an M108).

 

"Printing over USB is no longer maintained": Well that sucks. I find it super-convenient to print via USB. I guess as long as it continues working, I'll use it.

 

I did look into OctoPrint. The Raspberry Pi I own is too old, so I will have to upgrade it to use OctoPrint. I may have to go down this path eventually.

Thank you for your insignt, very helpful.

 

[garypuppa 0]

On 3/21/2024 at 10:27 AM, jaysenodell said:

As a e3s1p owner, octoprint is the right answer. Just stop using the sd for anything that is more than fire and forget. 

 

While I like my e3s1p, I won't buy another one. I'll just buy something without the screen. Likely just build my own at this point. i'm spending to much time working around creality's customizations.

"I'm spending to much time working around creality's customizations".  I 100% agree. I have spent WAY too much time trying to figure out work arounds to the 'Pause At Height' and 'Filament Change' scripts which I need for my prints.  And don't get me started on Ender's auto-leveling!!!

[jaysenodell 13]

Invest in an octoprint setup. All the pause scripts magically work since you are bypassing the firmware interpretation of what to do. I would spend on a pi unless you have one just just get a cheap i5 box and drop Debian on it. That is in my immediate future as my pi3 are getting … tired. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 271]

7 hours ago, garypuppa said:

I did look into OctoPrint. The Raspberry Pi I own is too old, so I will have to upgrade it to use OctoPrint. I may have to go down this path eventually.

OctoPi will run on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 which is fairly inexpensive, or you might be able to get a 3B cheap given the age. Depending on what you have, you might be able to run it there, just don't use a webcam, since that's one of the most CPU intensive things it can do.

 

2 hours ago, jaysenodell said:

I would spend on a pi unless you have one just just get a cheap i5 box and drop Debian on it. That is in my immediate future as my pi3 are getting … tired.

Hint: look at places that sell refurbished ex-fleet PCs. Hardware might be a couple of years old but they're cheap as chips. In my case I'd just buy a new RPi because of the power consumption (or lack thereof, specifically).

[jaysenodell 13]

Amazon. Belink. 16G/500G with a 3.5 Alder. $us170. Power consumption 2x of a pi 5. That thing will run windows and slice STL. Octo is nothing. Last time I priced a modern pi it was $20 less. 
 

im a huge fan of used hardware but for something like this it’s hard to beat those cheap cubes on amazon. 

[jaysenodell 13]

Here’s one for $130

 

Beelink New 11th Gen Intel 4-Cores N5095, Mini PC 8GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD, Mini Computer Dual HDMI 4K UHD/Gigabit Ethernet/Dual WiFi/BT

[Slashee_the_Cow 271]

2 hours ago, jaysenodell said:

Here’s one for $130

 

Beelink New 11th Gen Intel 4-Cores N5095, Mini PC 8GB DDR4 RAM 256GB SSD, Mini Computer Dual HDMI 4K UHD/Gigabit Ethernet/Dual WiFi/BT

@jaysenodell Please don't try and sell specific products unless someone asks for a link to a specific product.

 

Also, that thing is not worth the price. It only has an Atom CPU - by far the lowest performance in Intel's range, way below even the lowest notebook processors, designed for ultra low voltage applications, but with how inefficient the x86_64 architecture is an ARM CPU running slower will run laps around it.

 

It probably doesn't come with an OS installed which means either buying Windows (bad idea - 8GB of RAM is a criminally low amount of RAM to run Windows these days) or manually setting up a free OS and then OctoPrint on top of that. whereas with a Raspbery Pi all you need to do is run the Raspberry Pi Imager software to flash a memory card with OctoPi and you're done.

 

So you'd be paying more money for something which uses more power than an RPi, you can technically use as a proper computer if you want to bother setting up a monitor, keyboard and mouse, but you won't want to use as a proper computer because the performance is so terrible.

 

You'd have a much better, cheaper and easier experience with a Raspberry Pi for a single purpose device like this.

[jaysenodell 13]

Shouldn’t have been a link. Sorry if there was. The other info was to provide the context for the system. 
 

I think we will disagree on the total cost of the pi systems. Power supply, case, and board for a 5 are actually more than that unit. If we are running octo then an atom is fine. My experience is that it will outperform pi arm if you use a similarly stripped OS install. That thing ships with windows but that’s crippleware on that low end device. 
 

Pi have a place, but the price of the current systems … nope.  The limitations of the affordable class… not worth it unless your development specifies embedded systems. If the 5 can get back to less than 1/4 of the cost of that system above ready to plugin and go then it will be back into the prime spot again. 
 

For the record, I like the pi for embedded hardware development. Unless you need the GPIO I think there are more practical/affordable/capable options today. 

[gr5 2,176]

So now you got me curious.  I see rasp pi 4 B from adafruit for $35 and a case and power supply for $16 on amazon.  beelink I see for $170.  I know prices vary considerably around the world.  Also I think octoprint came out before the raspi 4 and before I think the 3 so if the 4's are expensive maybe you can get an older model for less?  I wouldn't know.

[jaysenodell 13]

The 4 module with ports is $us65 and out is stock because the current model is the 5. The 5 is $us80. The power supplies on the $us15 systems are undersized. Current minimum for 4&5 is 5a. I had to run 5a on my 3s to support octo and that was without any overclocking. Cooling is always the problem. Fans draw a lot of power. 
 

Beelink has a $us130 unit that outperforms pi all day. Just no gpio. Won’t be much of a desktop but for a print server/file store … hard to beat. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 271]

I think we're detracting a bit from the subject... although for what it's worth, I can buy a Pi 4B (and yes, it is in stock) for AU$62 with a power adapter for AU$16.45, an SD card which is plenty big for AU$12, and the Raspberry Pi foundation have official models to print your own case so I don't think we need to figure that into the equation 🙂 for a total of about US$59. It's also going to use less power in operation so you're saving some money there and it's silent (unless you install a fan, but I haven't needed to). I think you can actually run OctoPi on an RPi Zero 2 W which is a little under half the price of a 4B bringing the total down to about US$39.

 

Your mini PC might run rings around a RPi in performance and functionality but the Pi is more than capable of running OctoPrint (I'm doing it on a 3B+!) and that's all we're looking for here.

[jaysenodell 13]

7 hours ago, Slashee_the_Cow said:

 

Your mini PC might run rings around a RPi in performance and functionality but the Pi is more than capable of running OctoPrint (I'm doing it on a 3B+!) and that's all we're looking for here.

Same. Regular overheat with cooling. Not an issue. Will eventually add controllers (esp32) for enclosure via gpio. And will land on a 5 when I do that.  I’m just not convinced the pi is right for normal people from a cost or complexity perspective. 

[Slashee_the_Cow 271]

4 hours ago, jaysenodell said:

Same. Regular overheat with cooling. Not an issue. Will eventually add controllers (esp32) for enclosure via gpio. And will land on a 5 when I do that.  I’m just not convinced the pi is right for normal people from a cost or complexity perspective. 

Then let's agree to disagree and shut up about it 🙂