OctoPrint-PolarCloud

Connects OctoPrint to the PolarCloud so that you can easily monitor and control your printer from anywhere via https://polar3d.com

Setup

Install via OctoPrint's Plugin Manager via OctoPrint->Settings->Plugin Manager->Get More... then search for Polar and click "Install".

This may take a long while, especially if your platform needs to install and compile the cryptography package. It should be a reasonable wait on a Raspberry Pi Zero, 2 or 3 though.

Install CuraEngine Legacy plugin

Octoprint newer than version 1.3.10 requires that the CuraEngine Legacy slicing plugin be installed. If running the Polar Cloud Plugin 1.9 or newer, CuraEngine Legacy slicer needs to be installed.

Enable Polar Cloud timelapses

To create timelapse movies in the format required by the Polar Cloud, the plugin uses GStreamer. To install GStreamer and the necessary plugins, use the following command line:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-libav libx264-dev gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

Plugin Configuration

After installing the plugin and restarting OctoPrint, you need to register your printer with your PolarCloud user account.

• If you need a Polar Cloud account, you should start by creating one. See the project page for a step-by-step instructions.
• Visit https://polar3d.com and setup a PIN in Account Settings (click on your portrait and choose Settings).
• Bring up the plugin's settings via OctoPrint->Settings->PolarCloud.
• Choose the closest printer type to your printer. If your printer isn't listed please choose "Cartesian" or "Delta" (as appropriate) and later in the Polar UI you can adjust things like print area and start/end gcode when setting up a print.
• Click the Register Printer button and fill out your email address and PIN number (for your Polar3D account).
• In a few moments it should fill out the Serial number field in OctoPrint settings, be sure to press "Save" on the Settings box to save the Serial Number.
• If you visit the Polar Cloud and click on the hamburger and choose "Printers", it should show your OctoPrint instance as one of your printers.

Notes and Limitations

• Printing from the cloud requires the CuraEngine path to be set properly in the CuraEngine Legacy slicer plugin. A different CuraEngine plugin is installed by default in Octoprint prior to version 1.3.10. The latest version of the Polar Cloud Plugin requires that the CuraEngine Legacy slicer is installed.
• If you have a camera configured with OctoPrint you presently need to configure OctoPrint to use an absolute URL rather than a relative URL. This so that the Polar Cloud's web interface can display the live camera feed in your web browser when you are on the same local network as your printer's camera. The plugin will try to guess the absolute url if need be, but it can guess wrong if you have more than one network interface configured.
• While the Polar Cloud does present a "CONNECT" button and can therefore tell OctoPrint to connect via USB to your printer, the Polar Cloud cannot specify the serial device to use or the baud rate. You will want to set and save those in OctoPrint. Or, perhaps, avoid the issue entirely by configuring OctoPrint to automatically connect to your printer when OctoPrint starts.

Note for Users running OctoPrint on Windows

If you've got an old version of pyopenssl installed into the OctoPrint environment and you don't have ssh-keygen on your path, this plugin won't be able to register your printer with Polar Cloud. You'll get something about 'ssh-keygen' not found in octoprint.log. You can fix this by updating pyOpenSSL and restarting OctoPrint.