I bought a 3.5" LCD that mounts to the Raspberry Pi using the GIPO pins. After installing KlipperScreen software on the RPi all I has a was a white screen. Went back to the description of the screen on Amazon and found a link to a website that told how to install the drivers for the LCD. After doing this and change it from the default HDMI to LCD the screen came to life. The screen has many options and you can add more by having a KlipperScreen.cfg file. I bought a 3.5" one which is okay but I think I should have bought a 5" one but maybe not. I’ll give the 3.5" a little time and see how it goes.
Actually Klipper replaces Marlin and will work with Octoprint with a plugin. I think most that are running Klipper us either Fluidd or Mainsail in place of Octoprint. Both are less resource intense that Octoprint. I.m still playing and tuning Klipper to get the most out of it but to answer the question I am happy with it. One of it’s main advantages is you can make changes without recompiling. Make the changes in the printer.cfg file and restart Klipper and it’s ready to go.
Today I was starting a print and it didn’t stick to the bed so I need to cancel the print. I was able to so it with ease using KlipperScreen. I also adjusted the Z-offset on the fly during a 1st layer. Seems to work faster than doing the same in Mainsail. The only downside for me is the small screen (3.5") so I ordered a 5" to swap it out and am making a mount to mount the screen and the Pi where the Ender 3 screen was attached. Here’s some more pictures of the screens.
I must confess my total ignorance on these ‘systems’ because I haven’t considered trying them yet. My techie friend just eats up this information for breakfast, so I defer to him. Even though he has often helped me with electronic and things on my printer since 2019 he just recently realized that I could turn one of his 3d designs into a solid object in a short time. He is totally hooked now and I can see no salvation for this guy.
The Waveshare 5inch Capacitive arrived today. The 3.5 inch was also a Waveshare so I was hoping it would be plug in play. Wrong it booted into a login prompt, so the Pi was talking to is but it wasn’t loading the KlipperScreen GUI. I followed sever Klipperscreen documents and finally decided to start from scratch. I copied off all the klipper/mainsail config files off the the laptop. Took a different Sd card and flashed MainsailOS on it using Raspberry Imager. Sadly the same problem. From reading the log files it was a permission issue. Did some searching and found a suggestion to add a line to the Wrapper.conf file.
allowed_users = anybody
needs_root_rights = yes
That fixed the problem and the KlipperScreen GUI loaded. Then it was off to finish designing the mount for it which will hold both the screen and the PI, the screen is setup so the Pi can be bolted onto the back of the screen. I’ll upload some pictures of the mount when I get it printed.
Had a little corner lifting on the left lower corner. I have this issue on both printers when printing long prints. A little Elmer’s Glue stick will normally prevent this but as you can see I didn’t put any on the bed.
The only drawback that I saw with the 5" with the Raspberry Pi mounted on the back was that the SD card was hard to get to. Not that the SD card gets changed that much, but it’s still nice to be able to get it if without a lot of hassle. So I ordered a SD card extension from Amazon. Now the SD card is on the top of the screen, problem solved.
