To improve the 3D printer to be able to upload my print file directly via my network to the 3D printer instead of copying the print file to an SD card and then put the SD card into my 3D printer for printing. One of the common solutions to achieve this is by adding a Raspberry Pi or Raspberry pi clone running Octoprint. This gives not only the possibility to upload printer files via the network but this comes also with a lot of more tools to use. It becomes easier to control the 3D printer directly from the computer. This is including slicing my work on the printer and monitor my printer during the print from a distance.

I decide to not use a Raspberry Pi for this solution but to go for a small raspberry clone that has already WIFI in it. I have good experience with the products of Orange Pi. These are a bit cheaper than the Raspberry pi’s but have the same features. The Orange Pi series uses mostly the Alwinner processors.

The downside of using a Raspberry Pi clone is that is not supported by Rasbbarian OS. This makes it not possible to use pre-build instantiations based on Raspbarian that you can download. Instead of this, I must configure the Raspberry Pi clone self for the solution I need.

Hardware selection

Allwinner H616 64-bit high-performance Quad-core Cortex-A53 processor

Install Orangepi zero 2

Debian 10 (Buster):

Linux kernel 4.19
more tested in the Kubernetes world
natural upgrade from Debian 9
defaults to iptables NFT (not supported by most CNI plugins)
Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal):

Linux kernel 5.4
has fixes for all known kernel bugs at this time (including conntrack ones)
defaults to iptables Legacy (supported by most CNI plugins)
very similar to Debian, so most custom hooks and user scripts should still work
There may be some other considerations that I am missing. If so, please add a commoent.

Login as root on console (HDMI / serial) or via SSH and use password 1234. Yo

Setup Octoprint