Smoothieboard has a RJ45 connector, which can be used to connect the board to your local Ethernet network, and talk to it over TCP/IP.

This works the same way you would access your 2D printer or other network devices.

Overview of settings and hardware requirements for Smoothieboard's network interface.

Smoothie supports Ethernet access.

It must be enabled in the configuration file.

To enable network, set Network.enable to True.

The IP address can be set statically or set to use DHCP. Due to buffer size limitations, some DHCP servers are not supported.

Here is an example of a setup using DHCP ( meaning that the router automatically assigns an IP address to the Smoothieboard ) :

# network settings
network.enable                               true            # enable the ethernet network services
network.webserver.enable                     true             # enable the webserver
network.telnet.enable                        true             # enable the telnet server
network.plan9.enable                         true             # enable the plan9 network filesystem
network.ip_address                           auto             # use dhcp to get ip address

And an example of how to setup with a static IP

# network settings
network.enable                               true             # enable the ethernet network services
network.webserver.enable                     true             # enable the webserver
network.telnet.enable                        true             # enable the telnet server
network.plan9.enable                         true             # enable the plan9 network filesystem
network.ip_address                           192.168.3.222    # the IP address
network.ip_mask                              255.255.255.0    # the ip mask
network.ip_gateway                           192.168.3.1      # the gateway address

The basic network configuration options can be seen at the end of the Config Sample.

If your configuration file does not contain the network section, it probably means the version of Smoothie that shipped with your board is too old. You need to use the latest edge firmware, and use the latest configuration file. See Flashing Smoothie Firmware and Configuring Smoothie.

To access your Smoothieboard, you need to connect it to your network.

To do so, you plug an Ethernet cable into the Smoothieboard at one end, and into your Ethernet router at the other end.

Please note that you can't connect a Smoothieboard directly to your computer ( not unless you use a special type of cable and a special type of configuration on your computer ). You want to use a router for this.

Once configured and plugged in, reset the Smoothieboard and wait for it to connect to the network.

To access Smoothie over the network, you first need to know its IP address.

If you are not sure what IP address Smoothie has been assigned you can use one of the following methods :

• If you have a panel connected to the Smoothieboard, the panel should display the IP address.
• If you have access to your networks main routers administration interface, it should tell you the IP address of all peripherals connected to it.
• If you are connected to the board via USB, you should be able to use a program like Pronterface to send the @net command, which gives you the current IP address.
• If you are running linux, you can use a command like nmap -sn 192.168.0.0/24 to find all accessible peripherals on the network.
• NOTE if the IP address shows 173.222.239.190 then it means that DHCP did not get an IP address assigned. (Try a static IP instead).

You can access Smoothie by using its network services:

1. Telnet (port 23) to run commands, stream gcode to Smoothie or connect from Pronterface (see below)
2. HTTP web server (port 80) allows control from your web browser
3. Simple File Transfer Protocol (port 115) allows uploading of files from an SFTP client.
4. (NOT SUPPORTED needs to be enabled and compiled) Plan9 (9P/Styx) (port 564) provides remote access to the file system from compatible clients (typically Linux)

You can use a terminal to connect to your board via telnet, simply type in a terminal :

telnet ip_of_smoothie:23

Pronterface can also connect to Smoothie over the network by using telnet - just enter Ip_of_smoothie:23 instead of the serial port before clicking 'Connect'. Where Ip_of_smoothie is the IP address of your Smoothie. You must check the box under Settings Menu that says TCP streaming mode.

Raw telnet provides console access to run console-commands or g-code, useful network commands here are Net and Netstat. See the smoothie-stream.py example for streaming.

You can access the default user interface (see image) by going to this address in your web browser:

http://ip_of_smoothie/

Custom web pages can be accessed from the SD card, for example:

http://ip_of_smoothie/sd/webif/index.html

Web interface

It allows you to control the machine over the network

Note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_File_Transfer_Protocol NOT secure file transfer!) allows uploading of files, see the smoothie-upload.py example

NOTE plan9 is not built into smoothie by default, to include it rebuild smoothie with Make PLAN9=1. See Compiling Smoothie. The plan9 network file system can be used on Linux to directly mount the Smoothieboard over the network. At first activate the option “network.plan9.enable” and restart your Smoothie. After that you can mount with:

mount -t 9p 192.168.2.120 -o dfltuid=1000,dfltgid=1000 /mnt/smoothie 

Now you can access the SD card of the Smoothieboard like a normal filesystem!

The dfltuid/dfltgid are the uid/gid of the user which owns the files in the mount. It is recommended to set these to the uid/gid of the user which will write to the filesystem.

If you want you can also add the filesystem to your /etc/fstab as follows:

# /etc/fstab
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options>                      <dump> <pass>
... your other stuff ...
192.168.1.6     /mnt/smoothie 9p     user,noauto,dfltuid=1000,dfltgid=1000 0      0

If IP addresses are getting you down, you can address your smoothie by name if you add a line to your computer's hosts file. For example, assuming your Smoothie's address is 192.168.2.120, you could add:

192.168.2.120        smoothie

And then simply use Smoothie:23 in the Port field of Pronterface, and simply http://smoothie in your web-browser.

This only works from the computer you edit the hosts file on, and requires smoothie to have a constant IP address, either through configuring smoothie as static IP, or by configuring your DHCP server to always assign Smoothie the same IP address.

To use the network capabilities of the smoothieboard (4X and 5X, note the 3X board does not have ethernet capabilities ) a RJ45 Magnetic Modular Jacks aka RJ45 network transformer like the Hanrun HR911105A needs to be soldered onto the board.

They are, for example, available from RobotSeed.

You can configure a hostname for the DHCP server as such :

network.ip_address  auto          # use dhcp to get IP address
network.hostname   smoothie1   # optionally set this hostname for dhcp

Note the Network.hostname is optional. (see section 3.14 https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2132.txt)

If your network interface doesn't work as it should, you can get some debugging information ( such as the current IP ) by sending the Net command ( @net from pronterface ) command via the console ( USB or UART ).

IP Addr: 192.168.1.100
IP GW: 192.168.1.254
IP mask: 255.255.255.0
MAC Address: 00:1F:11:02:04:C9

Creating a custom interface, a script that talks to a Smoothieboard, or helping with Smoothie's web interface ( please do ! ) ?

Here's the API you can expect the board to answer to over HTTP.

Retreives the content of a file from the SD card. You can use this to retrieve the configuration file, but make sure to try both “/sd/config” and “/sd/config.txt” as both are valid filenames.

Returns the same as the “?” command over serial, or the “get status” command over any interface.

Example output : 

<Idle|MPos:-700.0000,0.0000,360.0000,0.0000|WPos:-700.0000,0.0000,360.0000|F:4000.0000|T:163.5,0.0|B:178.4,0.0>

Much faster than sending “get status” using /command

Parameter : The command you want to execute as the POST data/parameter

Returns : Whatever the command returned

Parameter : The command you want to execute as the POST data/parameter

Returns : Nothing. Faster than /command, prefer whenever possible