With the availability of the Raspberry Pie single board computer system for about $50 and Arduino single-chip computers and consumer-friendly systems like the Circuit Playground Express practical electronic builds are available to non-engineers. Many schools are using these systems to teach children about building with electronics starting in elementary school. This forum is dedicated to discussions of these and other consumer-friendly electronic products.
I have heard about raspberry pies for years, but never really looked into them. This maybe something I now look into since I have a 3d printer.
Have a rasberry pi 4 and still have not been able to get it on the network.
If you are trying to access via WI-FI, you might try hooking up with an either net cable and see if that works. There are a number of settings that need to be entered for wi-fi. Let us know if that works.
Thanks. I’ll give it a try.
Rasberry Pi and Arduino among other Programmable boards, are very usefull in 3D printers as well! I use them both even for printing monitoring, computer unit replacement etc. Ras Pi can be used for making MSLA or SLA 3d Printers saccesfully. I use them a lot!
Question: Can a Pi be used to actually run the printer? I’m thinking not, simply because I don’t think a stock Pi has stepper motor drivers (although there’s probably some addon you can get ?).
Well, yes and no and let me explain. As a computer board it can controll many external devices such as printer controllers BUT, if you use add ons such as shields ( cnc shields ), you could run a printer from basic to advanced mode depending on your programming skills! I haven’t yuse it to run a FFF printer …yet. I run SLS and MSLA printers successfully.
Here is an example …
Some other great boards to look at include the ESP8266 and the ESP32. They include great WiFi capabilities, flexible IO, and best of all they can be programmed via the Arduino IDE.
Here is a Hat for RasPi to run a printer https://reprapworld.eu/products/electronics/controller_boards/printhat_v1_32_bit_motor_controller_board_for_raspberry_pi/
Raspberry Pis are very nice. I have three connected to my printers (Pi1, 2xPi2 (OctoPrint)), a PI1 as my entrance camera (MotionEye), a PI3 with PiHole (keeps my network advert free) and a PI4 as a media center (Kodi) mounted on the back of a 24" Display.
The only downside when buying a Raspberry Pi is that they don´t come with a spare. Every time you buy one, you have exactly one PI less, than you need.
Same as Arduino…
Nah, I have two Arduinos laying around and no idea what to do with them. 
You could combine them with RasPi board as doghter boards as well!
All these electronics look very interesting. I have an ender 3 pro extra board that was flashed and I have a little arduino uno that we used to flash that board. What could I do with those that would be useful for my one ender 3 pro set up and macbook pro computer?
I don’t know about your Ender 3, but the Uno could be used to control a stepper motor and/or LED lighting for your lamps. The beauty about an UNO, besides how cheap they are, is that they always starting running the last loaded program when powered up.
I’ll have to read up on the uno.
If you want to get to know about the UNO I recommend Paul McWhorter’s video series on Youtube.
Thank you I will check it out.