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OctoPrint – Flashforge Creator Pro 2

Before we start, it’s important for you to note that this isn’t a supported setup for the Flashforge Creator Pro 2 to work with OctoPrint, it’s more of a work around. So it’s completely at your own risk.

I’m presuming you already have OctoPrint setup, if not, take a look at the be below article:

How to install OctoPrint / OctoPi on a Raspberry Pi

Also make sure that everything is up to date.

Setup an OctoPrint Printer Profile for the Flashforge Creator Pro 2

Select the settings / spanner icon, and select ‘Printer Profiles’.

Click ‘Add Profile’, and enter the values as shown below:

Click ‘Confirm’.

Set the new profile which we just created, as the default, by clicking the start icon:

Unless you need to keep the default printer, delete it.

Click ‘Save’.

Install the Flashforge plugin

Select the settings / spanner icon, and select ‘Plugin Manager’.

Click the ‘Ger More…’ button below the list of already installed plugins.

Search for Flashforge and install the below plugin:

If asked to restart, do so.

Setup the serial port

Select the settings / spanner icon, select ‘Serial Connection’, and set your settings as below:

General

Intervals & timeouts

Firmware & protocol

Behaviour

Click ‘Save’.

First attempt to connect

On the OctoPrint home page, click the refresh icon in the connection section, make your selection like below, and click ‘Connect’:

You will see an error like this:

If you select the ‘Terminal’ tab, you will see some errors and instructions to allow the Flashforge plugin permissions.

Add permissions for Flashforge plugin

For this, you will neet to SSH to your OctoPi, I like to use Putty, as it’s free and easy. So these instructions are based on using Putty.

1 Open Putty, and enter the IP address of your octopi, or you can use octopi.local instead, select ‘SSH’ and click ‘Open’.

2 Say ‘Yes’ to trusting the host and key:

3 Login to the terminal window.

The default username and password, if you haven’t changed them are:
Username: pi
Password: raspberry

4 Run the below command to open the text editor, so we can edit the file 99-octoprint.rules:

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-octoprint.rules

If asked for your password again, enter it.

The file will most likely be blank, so add the below text to it:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2b71", MODE="0666"

Save the changes by press CTRL + X, then press ‘Y’ and press enter to confirm the save.

5 Verify the file permissions are set to “rw-r–r–” by typing the below, and pressing enter:

ls -al /etc/udev/rules.d/99-octoprint.rules

It should show as below:

Reboot OctoPi by typing the below and pressing enter:

sudo reboot

After the reboot, your should see your the serial port has changed to the actual name of your printer.

Amend the serial port

Select the settings / spanner icon, select ‘Serial Connection’, and set your settings as below:

Click ‘Save’

That’s it, you can now use OctoPrint.

Final notes and caveat

Now as I said at the start, this isn’t an official or supported path, but for the post part it does seem to work. However, twice I have had it stop printing mid way through, complaining about the connection being lost. I haven’t tried replacing the USB cable yet, but it could just be that.

Please feel free to comment below about how it works for you, and if you have anything to add to make the setup better.

Good luck and enjoy.

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