Help with octoprint set up on Win 8 pc.

[BrickHaus]

Alright guys. I'm hoping the hivemind can help me.

I found my Grandpa's old All-In-One PC yesterday. my mom must have purchased it from his estate sale. Its a Dell Inspirion one 2020. It's a Windows 8 PC. With a touchscreen at its core. And knowing the original owner. It's barely used. But isn't much of an impressive machine by today's standards.

I was about to add it to the recycling pile when I got an idea.

I intend on installing octoprint on this machine. Ideally I'd mount it below my 3d printers, and plug a USB cord Into each printer. Then I can run windows, and with the help of python, I could run 2x instances of octoprint at the same time.



All that being said, I'm about 2 hours Into researching this, and Im running into some issues.

1. Running machines on Windows 10 with this configuration of softwares is documented on YouTube, but nothing covers Windows 8. I recall from my networking days that Windows 8 and 10 were very similar in the realm of networking scripts, so I assumed I could use the installation methods to a degree.

So this requires Python, but somewhere between Python 3.7 and 3.11. I installed 3.11.
This then requires Microsoft Visual Studio tools. i attempt to install 2022, but it's not compatible with Windows 8. So I did some more research, and found VS 2017 is the newest version of VS I can have within Windows 8.

I install that all fine. Get I to command prompt. Get to the root of C, get to C:/Octoprint ( a file I've created, and I created a virtual environment in.)

Run the pip program from command prompt in this folder, and it attempts to install. It chokes on one of the command scripts with an error code, stating "stack overflow" and that "Visual Studio 14 or greater is required."

I now assume I need to run an older version of Python, or simply change my path lines to make this work, but Im struggling to find the right informstion for this specific pile up of variables.

Ideally I believe need a verson of Python that will work with VS 2017 to allow me to run octoprint on my Windows PC. With Win 8.1. Or some other work around..

Anyone in here able to shed some insights on me please?
I have to leave for my mom's now anyways, but this afternoon I'll be poking at this some more, and aim hoping to have a better difection by then.

I can get pictures and or screorshots if you guys need information to assist me.

Thanks for any replies!

[Greaterthenjake]

Not the answer you are looking for.... But Linux is supported and always the answer.

[pghp8ntballer]

The upgrade from windows 8 to 10 should be free. I’ve done it a few times on Win 8 machines. It’s not the quickest method to getting you up and running, nor is it the answer you are looking for but it’s an option.

[BrickHaus]

I'm not sure the cpu and ram can handle win 10. But I'm seeing a Gen 3 I5 for 16 bucks used on ebay, and 8 gb ram for the same price. If I can get those Teo installed, I can upgrade to win 10.

Ideally I can workaround this issue somehow without sinking anything I to the rig.

[Greaterthenjake]

I know the Linux remark may have seemed a bit harsh. But it requires no updates or upgrades. Apparently this will run on the lowly Raspberry PI. Just requires a bit of a learning curve. Personally run a house full of Linux boxes and could help if you decide to try that route.

[BrickHaus]

I may go Linux. I assume the touch screen won't work in Linux though, so in that case, I may as well buy a couple of pis and do it the traditional way. I was just hoping g to modify some programs to make my current set of hardware work.

[RAZRBAKK]

So the thing with the OctoPrint community is that they are convinced the only way to run it is on a Raspberry Pi with the OctoPi image. Getting support for other computers can be difficult.

That being said, it can be done. I ran OctoPrint on my Ender3 on an old Toshiba laptop. After struggling to get the various features working(camera, mainly), I succumbed to the OctoPi suggestion. I'm sure I could have figured it out with a bit of work, but I just wanted to print.

I'm sure you could get the touchscreen working on Linux as well.

[Greaterthenjake]

The good news is that Dell actually will ship many of their PC's with Ubuntu installed (or used to its been a moment) and most if not all drivers work out of the box.

[lhamilton1807]

I installed Lubuntu (i.e. lightweight Ubuntu) on an Intel Compute Stick that was manufactured in 2016. It has 2G of RAM and 32GB of flash storage, powered by an anemic dual-core Intel Atom processor. It runs Octoprint just fine.

Burn Lubuntu or some other Ubuntu variant to a usb stick, install it on your Dell (plug the usb stick into the Dell and boot from the usb stick), and use the octoprint_deploy.sh script. About as easy as it gets. You don’t need to be a master in Linux Fu to do this, and I’ve only needed to log into Linux to fiddle with the network connection since I was in WiFi (Lubuntu has a graphical interface, so it’s not hard to navigate). Then deploy OctoPrint.

https://github.com/paukstelis/octoprint_deploy

Feel free to ping me for help if you want it.

I haven’t integrated a touchscreen, but haven’t felt it’s needed. I added my printer to Octoeverywhere and can view my print progress and control OctoPrint from my phone.

[BrickHaus]

This, along with my printers in general have been mainly unused all summer. Thanks for the motivation to get back to this.

[lhamilton1807]

You bet! Again, happy to help you along. Been doing IT work for a while now so diving into Linux isn’t all that scary to me. I get that it’s a big leap for those not used to it.
Any kind of mini pc will run octorpint. I’m sure your Dell has more than enough grunt.