michaelfdeberry/overseer

Request - Show live gcode progress view if no webcam available?

digitalsanity opened this issue · 1 comments

digitalsanity commented

If no webcam is available, can you show the gcode viewer tab of octoprint for that printer instead of the 'snow' effect?

michaelfdeberry commented

That was actually something that was going to be supported initially, but ended up being dropped.

A couple of the main issues are:

  1. Performance: The gcode file would need to be loaded for that to work and large gcode files can be a problem. Large files are problematic for Octoprint, and it only renders gcode for a single print. With Overseer there is potential that multiple gcode files could be rendered at once which could slow down or crash the browser.

  2. Compatibility: I suppose a long term goal is to support any printer with a web interface. Overseer currently supports the RepRap firmware in addition to Octoprint, and there are plans to support printers connected with USB as well. This feature would only work with Octoprint when not printing from SD.

Something I was thinking about was animating the head position with a "trail" effect. This wouldn't need the gcode file, but it would need the head position after every move. In some cases the head position won't be available, and in the cases that it is there is no guarantee that every move would be captured, or even enough to render something accurate enough to be useful.