Brand new i3 Mk2 setup after 12 hours of putting the kit together but I plan to put it way across the room. Was looking to route a USB A to B cable around the room but longest normal cable is 15 ft and I’d need at least 24 ft. I saw “active” or “powered” USB cables and I’m wondering if that would have any adverse affect on print quality or harm the electronics.
Or, uh, Pi. I usually dedicate a laptop while I am tuning a new printer, so naturally all my laptops are in use. So, octoprint 
Yeah Octoprint is nice but it’s kinda laggy and I’d much rather just manage everything via Simplify3D which has a better interface. Besides I have my desktop setup so it never sleeps unless I tell it to and I can remote connect into it from any of my other devices.
When was the last time you tried octoprint? I find it faster in response than pronterface. Never have an issue with it.
It’s actually most likely my network that cause Octoprint to run slow. Just ran a speed test and I’m barely getting 12 Mbps upload and 5 Mbps download. I still prefer to use Simplify3D for its enhanced machine control panel and 3D live gcode preview. I used Octoprint for a while on my Simple Metal, most recently about two months ago.
Using MK2 with OctoPrint on RasPi 3 with Pi camera [http://thingiverse.com/thing:964490] and with Simplify3D g-codes for last 7 months and it’s very smooth. My 1st choice as I want to see what’s happening remotely. 
Just try it sometimes again.
An active USB cable will have an internal USB-hub midway and should work fine. If you have spare hubs laying around you could just chain them together.
Just print using a SD card.
I print from the SD card occasionally but I don’t really notice a difference in quality and I still like to have a USB connection for remote monitoring. I’m connect to my Simple Metal with a 15 ft printer cable and that runs perfectly fine.
@Mindless It looks like your comment was marked as spam, most likely due to excessive commas. I removed the spam mark but watch out for that in the future.
Have you tried USB over network? I have a similar issue. Flexihub is a solution I was reading about recently…trouble is that 3D printers are presumably rather sensitive to packet losses.
A long active USB cable should work fine. IME, they only tend fall down when you have a power-hungry or very high-bandwidth device at the other end.
Does Simplify let you send gcode to the machine’s SD card over USB, then kick off the print from SD card via USB but with monitoring/control? ReplicatorG used to be able to do that and I thought it was the best of both worlds.
I’d rather not try out USB over network if it has those known issues. As for S3D sending code directly to the SD card, they do support it but mention that ti’s simply quicker to remove the SD card from the printer, plug it into the computer, save the gcode to the SD card, then plug it back into the printer. As far as my experience with Octoprint, I find that to be true.
Another option might be a Toshiba FlashAir wifi SD card. They support uploading; you could upload to the card over your network and then kick off an SD print.
https://www.flashair-developers.com/en/documents/tutorials/advanced/3/
https://flashair-developers.com/en/documents/api/uploadcgi/
Interesting idea but doesn’t help me with remote control and monitoring
Oh, USB for that, since you’re happy with Simplify3D. I was just thinking of alternatives to relying on a long USB run for motion control, if it gives you problems. I think we’ve covered every option now. =D