makerbotd

makerbotd is a daemon that manages connections to MakerBot 3D printers. With it, you can control your printers with simple HTTP API calls.

This software is mid-development. It is not stable yet. That said, feel free to play around with it!

Examples

Here are some examples of what makerbotd can do.

Send GET /api/v1/printers, get a list of connected printers back:

{
    "result": [
        {
            "machine_type": "platypus",
            "vid": 9153,
            "ip": "10.65.1.99",
            "pid": 5,
            "api_version": "1.9.0",
            "iserial": "23C100053C7059018291",
            "ssl_port": "12309",
            "machine_name": "Kevin",
            "motor_driver_version": "4.6",
            "bot_type": "replicator_5",
            "port": "9999",
            "firmware_version": {
                "major": 2,
                "minor": 6,
                "bugfix": 1,
                "build": 724
            }
        }
    ],
    "error": null
}

Send a print file to the printer with POST /api/v1/printers/23C100053C7059018291/prints.

Grab a snapshot from the printer's camera with GET /api/v1/printers/23C100053C7059018291/snapshot.jpg:

You can do even more: suspend/resume print jobs, get the current state (progress, step, time left) of a print, cancel a print entirely...

Setup

Systemd

Since makerbotd is a daemon, it expects to be run as a background process. If you use systemd, you can install the makerbotd service with make install-systemd (may need sudo). This command will:

• Build makerbotd
• Move it to /usr/local/bin/makerbotd
• Copy the makerbotd.service file to the /etc/systemd/system directory

It will not enable or start makerbotd after you run this command. You should run systemctl enable makerbotd or systemctl start makerbotd after this if you wish.

After makerbotd starts for the first time, it will create a config file in the directory specified. With the sample makerbotd.service in this directory, it will create it at /etc/makerbotd/config.json. You should edit this config file to suit your needs and then systemctl restart makerbotd. (Reloading is not supported yet.)

Docker

You may also use Docker to run makerbotd. A Dockerfile and sample docker-compose.yml file is included in the root of this repository. Pay particular attention to the volumes in the docker-compose.yml file, as you will need to change it so that it points to your config.

Configuration

Since this project is in a pretty early state, the schema of the config file may change from time to time. Here it is as of right now:

type config struct {
	Debug               bool            // Debug makes output more verbose
	ThingiverseUsername string          // ThingiverseUsername defines the username of the authenticated Thingiverse account
	ThingiverseToken    string          // ThingiverseToken defines the auth token of the authenticated Thingiverse account
	ListenSocket        bool            // ListenSocket defines whether or not makerbotd will listen on a unix domain socket
	ListenSocketPath    string          // ListenSocketPath defines the unix domain socket to listen on if ListenSocket is true
	ListenTCP           bool            // ListenTCP defines whether or not makerbotd will listen on a TCP port
	ListenTCPAddress    string          // ListenTCPPort defines the TCP port to listen on if ListenTCP is true
	AutoAddPrinters     bool            // AutoAddPrinters defines whether or not printers should automatically be added from the authenticated Thingiverse account (DOES NOTHING RIGHT NOW)
	Printers            []printerConfig // Printers is the list of MakerBot printers that will automatically be connected when makerbotd starts
}

type printerConfig struct {
	ConnectionType string // ConnectionType should be either "local" or "remote". "local" = direct connect via IP, "remote" = remotely connect via MakerBot Reflector service.
	ID             string // ID should be provided if the connection type is "remote". This is the ID of the printer as returned by MakerBot Reflector. It is usually the serial number.
	IP             string // IP should be provided if the connection type is "local"
	Port           string // Port should be provided if the connection type is "port"
}

A sane default config is written on first start that connects to no printers and listens at /var/run/makerbot.socket.

API

Check out api_v1.go to see what API routes are available. I don't want to write proper documentation just yet since it will likely change pretty often while this is in development. I recommend using Postman for testing the API out -- it has pretty good UNIX domain socket support. For example: unix:///var/run/makerbot.socket:/api/v1/printers

License

TBD