Home Automation with Home Assistant and ESP8266, 3D Printing, and other Technology
I recently saw this on Amazon and figured I could print that. I’ve also been wondering about embedding an object into the middle of a 3D print, so I figured this would be a good project. So I bought these blades, and measured them, and started working in Fusion 360. In hindsight, I think that some jigsaw blades would have been easier when modeling since there aren’t any weird angles to deal with. Either way, it wasn’t too difficult.
Note: This printer is pretty much the same as the Creativity Elf (AliExpress) and Sapphire Plus, so if you are searching for any details about this printer, searching for the Elf or Sapphire might be useful as well. I think there might be slight differences though. The frame is a different color, and the Coreception comes with LED lighting, which the ELF doesn’t appear to have.
So Amazon has the Sainsmart Coreception for $100 off (I just created a subReddit for it). And since I’ve been looking for a larger CoreXY printer to replace/compliment my Ender 5, I decided to buy it. And while I wait for it to arrive, I wanted to figure out if there was a better way to directly upload my timelapses to YouTube. My old method, stopped working. And since it was a little complicated I figured I would create a better solution that would be more reliable.
After a few months of owing my first 3D printer, I wrote a blog post talking about things that I wish I knew when I first got it. It’s now a year later, and I’ve learned a lot since then, so I figured I would share that.
Set your expectations on quality
So I’m seeing a lot of posts on Reddit and other places about people wanting to compile Marlin and having a tough time with, or more commonly, many people just aren’t doing it because it seems intimidating. I’m hoping to put together a walkthrough that simplifies the process as much as possible for people that aren’t really comfortable compiling something. Many people think you need to be a programmer to do it. You don’t.
For a few months now, I've been looking for a way to upload videos from OctoPrint (This link is to my previous write-up on OctoPrint and its plugins. Please check it out.) to YouTube automatically. I was optimistic when I learned about the OctoPrint-Dropbox-Timelapse plugin, and Zapier, I was optimistic that they would be able to do what I wanted. However, I was not able to get it working. But the OctoPrint-Dropbox plugin had a recent update, and all of a sudden, it all just started working. So I figured there might be others that wanted this, so i did a write-up on it.
About 8 months ago I purchased a Creality Ender 5. I wrote a mini getting started guide about it. In that guide, I mentioned OctoPrint, and how I would do a separate write-up on that. I installed OctoPrint after a few prints. I wanted to be able to monitor the prints remotely since the printer is down in the basement. This write-up goes through my setup and settings along with the plugins I used.
As I talked about in my last post about the FilaWeigher, I wanted to add MQTT and temperature/humidity(Using the BME280) to that project. Well, I've done that. Refer to the previous post for more details. But now for this one, I'm just going to focus on the updated code and schematics, and the Home Assistant integration via MQTT. I'm going to leave the old post up for the people that don't want MQTT or the BME280 sensor. This version also has JSON output of all the sensors which allows for OctoPrint integration(I actually just finished up that plugin and I'm going to be posting that up soon).
I created this project so I can know exactly how much filament is left on a spool for my 3D printer, an Ender 5 I wrote about previously. However, it can very well be used to weigh anything else. I put a few settings that are specific to the filament, but they don't have to be used.
UPDATE: I have written an updated post(1 year later) about this printer. Be sure to read that one after this one as there is some update info in there. Here is the link to it.
About 2 months ago, I decided to finally pull the trigger on purchasing a 3D printer. I settled on the Creality Ender 5. I felt that it struck the right balance between bed size, price, and the community behind it. Although the community isn’t extremely large on its own, I felt that it’s similar enough to the Ender 3 that I should be able to able to figure out any issues by using the same types of advice. I have found that to be accurate for the most part. In addition, it looks like the number of Ender 5 users have increased sharply around the time I bought it. I also liked how it had the 4 vertical rails, which I’m sure gives it a lot more stability.