CAM software to begin

@Paxman Yessir!! here is the “how to” that I followed: RPi Webcontrol for dummies @Orob does a fantastic job of listing out the steps and the commands to input at each step!

I read through it about 50 bazillion times before I even bought, and then even attempted to try setting it up. I found it to be pretty straight forward. Some of the terms needs to be updated (Like the names of the Pi OS), I think, but all of the commands that need to be typed in and all the set up procedures were spot on and everything worked. The only issue I had was I set it up in my family room (Maslow is in the garage) and tested the connectivity and the service running WC. It took a bit to get the right USB port to be recognized, but a couple of resets/power cycles (shutting the Pi down appropriately on all attempts) eventually got it working and recognizing the Pi. The good thing about that post is there was someone that had some issues that were able to be worked through, so that was also helpful for me to look out for that to happen. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have any (aside from the USB port). I have a Pi 4 that I got from ADAFruit, but any of the distributers are fine. I think it is either a 1GB or a 2GB. I loaded the regular desktop version so I could see what I was doing (I am a bit of a visual person), but I am pretty sure I could redo it with just the command line interface (CLI) version of the OS and save a little space on the SD card. (Of Note: ensure you enable SSH or VNC BEFORE you try to take it out and use it headless with your machine!! Ask me how I know!! :upside_down_face: :thinking:)

I even set up /home/pi/.WebControl/gcode as a shared SAMBA folder (instructions here), which is a nice feature as I can just use my laptop inside to design my project and create the gcode for it, save that Gcode to the SAMBA /home/pi/.WebControl/gcode, and I don’t have to worry about transferring it via usb or anything to the Pi as it is already there. In WC, I go to Open gcode and the file is there.

Again, as someone that didn’t have any Linux experience, I found it was really very simple to do and get set up.

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