Networking a Taz 6: Explain it like I'm five

I work for a public library and we’re planning on premiering our new Taz 6 soon. My question is, does anyone know if it’s possible to network a Taz 6 using an ethernet to USB adapter? I’d love to be able to run 3D prints through Cura from my office computer to the public location where we’re planning on displaying the Taz 6, but I’m not sure it’s possible to network the printer via an ethernet port.

Any thoughts? Is this even possible?

The easiest method is using a $35 device called a raspberry pi https://www.adafruit.com/product/3055?gclid=CjwKCAjwzYDMBRA1EiwAwCv6JqxUVimaq1_8ggOOkvZ1udK1AOMF5VyHhwqXRR9PH8CrMUWZkK5_CBoCjcMQAvD_BwE and a free software called octoprint http://octoprint.org You can bolt it directly to the side of a taz 6 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1663146

You basically download the octopi Linux image to the raspberry pi sd card, plug a network cable into the pi, plug the printer into the pi usb port and follow the instructions http://octoprint.org/download/ to bring it up. If you can install Windows on a computer, you can install octopi.

If you do it right, you then have a website that you can link to from your office computer to start prints. You can add a $35 camera to the pi and even watch it print from your desk.

The one downside to it is you either have a network interface OR a usb interface, not both. So your control computer with the taz would also need to use that web interface. You can password protect that interface if you like.

There are other options that do the same thing, like astroprint but they a. Cost, and b. Aren’t great.

You can get pre loaded card kits for around $65 http://www.ebay.com/itm/2016-Octoprint-3D-Print-Starter-Kit-for-Raspberry-Pi-3-Model-B-Power-Supply-Case-/222587434333?var=&hash=item33d33eb55d:m:mDEbw3hIka1fY9V_0dCwB6Q

I second piercet’s suggestion.

Octoprint is quite easy to set up and the process is well documented. As piercet mentions you can and should password protect the interface, especially if it is on your public network. Users can still monitor various aspects of the print without being logged in which might be really interesting to some patrons. If you add a camera, Octprint can create time lapse movies of prints which they could watch. Note that while they cannot control the printer, they can see all of the local .gcode files and download them. Probably not an issue but something to be aware of.