Printer Farm Control Software?  

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

Posted by: gary.s4

Interested in any information about how Prusa controls his farm with 500+ printers running. I doubt they are all being run manually with SD cards but could be wrong.

Josef recently released a history of the company video marking 100,000 printers shipped. In it he talks about the original software for the first (4 printer) farm on an iPad, and he does mention (and you see a screenshot) of the software controlling the big farm of today.

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

Super.. thanks for the heads-up..

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

I believe they use separate Ethernet to Serial convertors, for each machine, and Monitor / control them over the network

regards Joan

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

I would also like to know how they are going from USB client to Ethernet. The control and monitor software is self written. Prusa mentioned that part.

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

probably USB to ethernet adapter

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

Regular USB to ethernet adapter means that you plug in USB in your laptop and you're getting an ethernet device on your laptop. The USB adapter is USB client. But we need a USB server which takes the printer as USB client.

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

probably something like http://www.sednacomputer.com/products/se-usb-serv-24g.html

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

Posted by: david.a66

probably something like http://www.sednacomputer.com/products/se-usb-serv-24g.html

 

Looks to me like it's a file share server. Don't see a price tag but I assume over $50.

I'm pretty sure they are going a lot more inexpensive route. Otherwise they could also use a Raspi, maybe they do?

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

its a quad USB over ethernet server - allows you to connect to 4 USB devices via an ethernet connection $70

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

A company called Digi (same company that makes the XBee radio modules) has a couple lines of both USB device to ethernet and Serial/TTY to ethernet adapters. At a previous job I used some of their 2-port serial to ethernet adapters to be able to connect to our serial data-streams from instruments installed in several locations in northern Canada and also in Antarctica from our home-base in Delaware. The Digi devices aren't as inexpensive as $50/device, but they are rock solid performance and reliability wise. (The only communications issues we had with them was more down to satellite internet or power at the remote sites than the Digi boxes.)

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

There is a new video on YouTube. 3DPN (Joel Telling) got a tour from J. Prusa. In the video J. Prusa mentioned that they are preparing to release their farm software to the public. (I would imagine it would be open sourced, but he didn't specifically say.) No mention of dates though.

Something interesting, is J. Prusa mentioned that all the printers (500 in the farm) are connected by ethernet (he doesn't say how). When the print is done, because the system knows what was just printed, once the operator confirms a good print the parts are added to the invientory. He also said that they are able to update the firmware of all the machines over ethernet (instead of having to connect to and flash each and every one manually).

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

You don't need USB to Ethernet. Just tap into the serial. Just plain RX and TX at TTL level.

So a serial TTL to Ethernet adapter would be enough. Preferably one that is transparent as in you can telnet or ssh into it and get get same data that you would get using a serial console.

Do a search on the well knows Chinese site starting with Ali for CH9121

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

That will be awesome .. Will look for the announcement ..

Thanks for the info

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

I can't wait.  I might need to buy more printers then.  

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

Posted by: Sembazuru

A company called Digi...

This is exactly the product I thought of when I heard about the Prusa farm! I've never had a reason to use one, but it's saved in my bag of tricks for when a problem like this comes up.

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

I am still amazed it is run by an ipad.  

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

This control software can't be released soon enough. 🙂  

We currently have 24 MK3s with 4 on back order, and will likely be close to 50 in the next 6 months.  Our workflow is pretty efficient and we're using SD cards for each print at the moment, but being able to see printer status on a single app would be a dream.

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

It is likely that they can use software for this, such as USB Network Gate or Flexihub. I think this is the easiest way to remotely access the Printer. There are also hardware gadgets as https://www.digi.com/products/networking/usb-connectivity/usb-over-ip/anywhereusb

RE: Printer Farm Control Software?

@tribgarry

Or some variation of terminal server with lots of serial or USB ports - it can be dedicated appliance (I know Lantronix, WTI or Opengear make those as Cisco now has their serial console ports over Mini-USB); or homebrew console server like Linux machine with metric ton of USB ports which you convert to RJ45 for transport over Ethernet cable for longer distance. Additionally can use TCP wrapper on head end to directly map resulting /dev/ttyUSBx device into TCP port and farm software communicates through TCP. I don't know, I am curious as well.