Someone of you may be positively surprised how simple it is to stream GCode

3D Printing
,
2

Would it be possible to wrap this code up into a class? Then you could write a script to create a class instance for each printer, then run the class functions asynchronously. I used threading (import threading) to fire concurrent processes off on one of my projects.
foreground function launched a webserver, while background function ran a jukebox-like music player:

def background():
Player.Routine1()

def foreground():
main_loop.start()

b = threading.Thread(name='background', target=background)
f = threading.Thread(name='foreground', target=foreground)
b.start()
f.start()
3

Do you think using the multiprocessing module would be better?

4

@shauki absolutely!

5

I need an alternative to sleep(sec) because the way this code is written loads the CPU core 100% which reduces printing speed. Adding sleep(1) also reduces print speed. Need a better way for checking _command_received.is_set() please.

6

@shauki I shall have a look tonight buddy, see if I can find an alternative :slight_smile:

7

@shauki , I’m thinking you could use serial.in_waiting to determine if there are items in the buffer to read in the first place. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38645060/what-is-the-equivalent-of-serial-available-in-pyserial

8

I can tell you that Cura and OctoPrint are both written in Python. You could use them for inspiration. OctoPrint is Python 2.7x. I do not know which major Python version Cura is.

9

You should probably read this too. It mentions importing Event from Threading so that you can define myEvent and say myEvent.wait() which is handy.

I have saturated 8 cores on a 2 or so year old server using Python. It got the job done. I even managed to do it without wasting CPU cycles. I was using some of those multithreading modules. I forget if it was with multiprocessing.pool or what.

10

Oh yeah. The Python website has a good multiprocessing section to read through. https://docs.python.org/2/library/multiprocessing.html#

One thing to watch out for in multiprocessing and multithreading is accessing the same variables from multiple threads/processes without locks.

11

Thanks gentlemen. Please notice:
while not _ok_event.is_set():
time.sleep(1) # pass overloads CPU core
The loop in the updateDaemon does not overload.
What actually I need is a sleep of milliseconds, not seconds.

12

My bad: “The argument may be a floating point number to indicate a more precise sleep time” so sleep(0.01) should work. To be tasted later :slight_smile:

13

@shauki That should do it :slight_smile:

14

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15

@shauki great to see mate!

16

Thanks Craig! The prior print job finished in 3:30 compared to SD 2:35. It was with 0.001 sleep and print to screen. Now 0.01 sleep without print output and things look and sound much better:

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17

I was wondering how changing from 0.001 sleep time to 0.01 sleep time made it perform better and then I realized that you removed a print statement. Yeah. opening up the console and printing a little bit of text is for some reason a performance hog. I don’t know…maybe they need to change console interaction to a separate thread or something in Python. It is mind boggling that it would be that slow at printing text.

18

The far most one printed in 2:25. Switching gears to multiprocessing

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19

Does this take into account checksums and requests to re-send certain lines?

20

Not in this iteration @Steve_M . Before I get troubles in real production I shall not consider bringing it in.

21

@anon57870006 consider me signed up matey :slight_smile:

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