It’s no secret that Raspberry Pi’s are a little hard to come by these days. Unless you had the foresight to stock up before the supply dried up — and if you did, we want to talk to you — chances are good that you’ve got a fair number of projects that use the ubiquitous SBC on indefinite hold. And maybe that’s got you thinking about alternatives to the Pi.

That’s apparently what was on [Crimson Repair]’s mind lately, the result being the discovery that an old thin client PC makes a dandy stand-in for a Raspberry Pi, at least in some cases. The video below is on the long side, true, But it’s chock full of command-by-command instructions for getting a Dell Wyse 3040, a thin client that can be found on the secondary market for $25 or so, up and running as a Klipper alternative for a 3D printer. These machines, which usually see use in point-of-sale applications and the like, sport a 1.4-GHz Intel Atom processor and a couple of gigs of RAM, and the form factor is just right for tucking into the base of an Ender 3.

Getting one up and running is a matter of getting a Debian image onto a USB key and configuring the thin client to boot from USB. After that it’s a simple matter of installing Klipper and wiring up a buck converter to power the machine. It’s not exactly rocket surgery, but why muddle through the process when someone has already been down the path ahead of you? And if you want to take it further, the second video below walks you through all the steps needed to add a touchscreen using an old Android phone. With a 3D printed bracket, the whole thing is a nicely complete printer control solution.

Continue reading “Thin Client And Smartphone Step In For 3D Printer’s Raspberry Pi And Touchscreen” →