Download & Setup OctoPrint

OctoPi

Guy Sheffer maintains “OctoPi”, a Raspbian (and thus Debian) based SD card image for the Raspberry Pi that already includes OctoPrint plus everything you need to run it:

  • OctoPrint plus its dependencies
  • MJPG-Streamer for live viewing of prints and timelapse video creation, compatible with various USB webcams and the Raspberry Pi camera
  • CuraEngine 15.04 for slicing directly on your Raspberry Pi

Recommended hardware: Raspberry Pi 3B.

Please note that the Raspberry Pi Zero W is not recommended since severe performance issues were observed, caused by the WiFi interface when bandwidth is utilized (e.g. the webcam is streamed), negatively impacting printing results. See also here.

You can download the latest OctoPi image via the following button.

  Download OctoPi 0.16.0 MD5Sum of the .zip: c363d50f80f04bebcdc774ec20ad22ce
Image compatible with Raspberry Pi A, B, A+, B+, 2B, 3A+, 3B, 3B+, Zero and Zero W.
Image not compatible with Raspberry Pi 4, test builds here!
Raspberry Pi 3B or 3B+ strongly recommended!

or simply buy one of the available

All-in-one OctoPrint Kits

Setting up OctoPi

Please follow these steps after downloading:

  1. Unzip the image and install the contained .img file to an SD card using Etcher. Do not at any point format the SD from your Operating System, even if prompted to do so - that will break it and you’ll have to start over. Just use Etcher to flash the .img file, that is enough!

  2. Configure your WiFi connection by editing octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt on the root of the flashed card when using it like a thumb drive. Important: Do not use WordPad (Windows) or TextEdit (MacOS X) for this, those editors are known to mangle the file, making configuration fail. Use something like Notepad++, Atom or VSCode instead or at the very least heed the warnings in the file.

    Note: This changed with OctoPi 0.15.0, earlier versions had you edit octopi-network.txt which has a different format. This old method is no longer supported and the contents of this file will be ignored. Just use octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt.

    Please also refer take a look at the full WiFi setup guide in the FAQ that also includes Troubleshooting tips.

  3. Boot the Pi from the card.

  4. Log into your Pi via SSH (it is located at octopi.local if your computer supports bonjour or the IP address assigned by your router), default username is “pi”, default password is “raspberry”. Run sudo raspi-config. Once that is open:

    1. Change the password via “Change User Password”
    2. Optionally: Change the configured timezone via “Localization Options” > “Timezone”.
    3. Optionally: Change the hostname via “Network Options” > “Hostname”. Your OctoPi instance will then no longer be reachable under octopi.local but rather the hostname you chose postfixed with .local, so keep that in mind.

    You can navigate in the menus using the arrow keys and Enter. To switch to selecting the buttons at the bottom use Tab.

    You do not need to expand the filesystem, current versions of OctoPi do this automatically.

  5. Access OctoPrint through http://octopi.local or http://<your pi's ip address>. https is available too, with a self-signed certificate.

Please also refer to OctoPi’s README, especially the “How to use it” section.

Thomas Sanladerer created a great video guide on how to get OctoPi 0.12 up an running.

Further resources

Installing from source

The generic setup instructions boil down to

  1. Installing Python 2.7 including pip and virtualenv.
  2. Obtaining the source through either of:
    1. cloning the source repository: git clone https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint.git
    2. downloading an archive of the current stable version from Github and unpacking it
  3. Creating a (user owned) virtual environment in the source folder: virtualenv venv
  4. Installing OctoPrint into that virtual environment: ./venv/bin/python setup.py install
  5. OctoPrint may then be started through ./venv/bin/octoprint or with an absolute path /path/to/OctoPrint/venv/bin/octoprint

More specific setup instructions for the most common runtime environments can be found below.

Linux

For installing OctoPrint from source, please take a look at the setup instructions for Raspbian on the wiki. They should be pretty much identical on other Linux distributions.

Windows

For installing the OctoPrint server on a Windows system, please take a look at the setup instructions for Windows on the forum.

Mac

For installing the OctoPrint server on a Mac, please take a look at the setup instructions for MacOS on the wiki.

OctoPrint's development is made possible through the support of all the awesome patrons on Patreon and
Support the project!
OctoPrint's development is made possible through the support of all the awesome patrons on Patreon and
Support the project!

OctoPi

Guy Sheffer maintains “OctoPi”, a Raspbian (and thus Debian) based SD card image for the Raspberry Pi that already includes OctoPrint plus everything you need to run it:

  • OctoPrint plus its dependencies
  • MJPG-Streamer for live viewing of prints and timelapse video creation, compatible with various USB webcams and the Raspberry Pi camera
  • CuraEngine 15.04 for slicing directly on your Raspberry Pi

Recommended hardware: Raspberry Pi 3B.

Please note that the Raspberry Pi Zero W is not recommended since severe performance issues were observed, caused by the WiFi interface when bandwidth is utilized (e.g. the webcam is streamed), negatively impacting printing results. See also here.

You can download the latest OctoPi image via the following button.

  Download OctoPi 0.16.0 MD5Sum of the .zip: c363d50f80f04bebcdc774ec20ad22ce
Image compatible with Raspberry Pi A, B, A+, B+, 2B, 3A+, 3B, 3B+, Zero and Zero W.
Image not compatible with Raspberry Pi 4, test builds here!
Raspberry Pi 3B or 3B+ strongly recommended!

or simply buy one of the available

All-in-one OctoPrint Kits

Setting up OctoPi

Please follow these steps after downloading:

  1. Unzip the image and install the contained .img file to an SD card using Etcher. Do not at any point format the SD from your Operating System, even if prompted to do so - that will break it and you’ll have to start over. Just use Etcher to flash the .img file, that is enough!

  2. Configure your WiFi connection by editing octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt on the root of the flashed card when using it like a thumb drive. Important: Do not use WordPad (Windows) or TextEdit (MacOS X) for this, those editors are known to mangle the file, making configuration fail. Use something like Notepad++, Atom or VSCode instead or at the very least heed the warnings in the file.

    Note: This changed with OctoPi 0.15.0, earlier versions had you edit octopi-network.txt which has a different format. This old method is no longer supported and the contents of this file will be ignored. Just use octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt.

    Please also refer take a look at the full WiFi setup guide in the FAQ that also includes Troubleshooting tips.

  3. Boot the Pi from the card.

  4. Log into your Pi via SSH (it is located at octopi.local if your computer supports bonjour or the IP address assigned by your router), default username is “pi”, default password is “raspberry”. Run sudo raspi-config. Once that is open:

    1. Change the password via “Change User Password”
    2. Optionally: Change the configured timezone via “Localization Options” > “Timezone”.
    3. Optionally: Change the hostname via “Network Options” > “Hostname”. Your OctoPi instance will then no longer be reachable under octopi.local but rather the hostname you chose postfixed with .local, so keep that in mind.

    You can navigate in the menus using the arrow keys and Enter. To switch to selecting the buttons at the bottom use Tab.

    You do not need to expand the filesystem, current versions of OctoPi do this automatically.

  5. Access OctoPrint through http://octopi.local or http://<your pi's ip address>. https is available too, with a self-signed certificate.

Please also refer to OctoPi’s README, especially the “How to use it” section.

Thomas Sanladerer created a great video guide on how to get OctoPi 0.12 up an running.

Further resources

Installing from source

The generic setup instructions boil down to

  1. Installing Python 2.7 including pip and virtualenv.
  2. Obtaining the source through either of:
    1. cloning the source repository: git clone https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint.git
    2. downloading an archive of the current stable version from Github and unpacking it
  3. Creating a (user owned) virtual environment in the source folder: virtualenv venv
  4. Installing OctoPrint into that virtual environment: ./venv/bin/python setup.py install
  5. OctoPrint may then be started through ./venv/bin/octoprint or with an absolute path /path/to/OctoPrint/venv/bin/octoprint

More specific setup instructions for the most common runtime environments can be found below.

Linux

For installing OctoPrint from source, please take a look at the setup instructions for Raspbian on the wiki. They should be pretty much identical on other Linux distributions.

Windows

For installing the OctoPrint server on a Windows system, please take a look at the setup instructions for Windows on the forum.

Mac

For installing the OctoPrint server on a Mac, please take a look at the setup instructions for MacOS on the wiki.