Does anyone use either Octoprint or an LCD interface for their printer? I’m weighing the benefits of them both and wanted to know about people’s firsthand experiences. I would especially like to know if anyone has personal experiences with both.
Octoprint - ~$50 for a rasberry Pi, available immediately
Viki LCD - ~$75 for a pre-order until the next batch is done
I got a 7 inch monitor off amazon for 35 $ . Ive got a pi and I made some boards to plug into the ATX and power the pi.
OctoPrint is possibly the best thing that’s happened to RepRap in a while. It works super reliably and just makes printing so much more comfortable. You don’t even need a screen for it!
Also you don’t need a raspberry pi to run Octoprint, in my case it means I don’t have to worry about what I’m doing on the laptop whilst printing.
@Thomas_Sanladerer honestly, you just made my day with this statement 
Glad to contribute something useful!
To @Mark_Oates 's question: IMHO it depends – again – on the usecase. I created OctoPrint because I wanted to be able to control and monitor my printer w/o needing to stand right next to it. Which is also why I never got myself an Ulticontroller. So… if you just want to print without an attached laptop, want knobs and a display on the printer itself (and maybe also the benefit of not having to print over USB but directly from SD) and have the printer in your direct vicinity anyways, some LCD-with-SD-attachment might be just the thing for you.
If on the other hand (like me) you have your printer in some room far far away (ok, the second bathroom isnt that far actually, but I’m a computer scientist and such predestined to be lazy… ;)) and still want to make sure it’s not doing anything stupid and maybe also adjust stuff on the run or start a print or whatever, you have the exact reason at hand why I have spent nearly every weekend since the holidays hacking Python and JavaScript 
I also from time to time have that idea of putting those GPIO pins of the Pi to some good use and attach an LCD and buttons there for some instant status updates, and finally get printing-from-SD working, but at least the LCD-button-thing is still way down the road.
What is the benefits of have an LCD screen ?
@Richard_Mitchell That’s a great point. I was attracted to the use of a Raspberry Pi for Octoprint due to the small footprint, but the fact that it doesn’t require one is another plus in its favor.
@foosel Thank for the detailed response. The electronics board has its own SD controller, so the lack of one on the Raspberry Pi combined with Octoprint isn’t a loss of functionality for me, and since I can just toss the .gcode onto Octoprint, I’m not sure I would make much use of the SD card feature anyhow.
I’m looking forward to giving Octoprint a whirl…
works with a Makibox out of the Box
I think the LCD would need to be REALLY BIG to have the same visibility as Octoprint …
I’ve been using @OctoPrint almost exclusively for months and it’s been excellent and seems to get better every day!
I always used an LCD screen and just got the OctoPi working. I will still continue to use the LCD when I am in front of the printer since that is what I am used to and I know there is no lag. However, it is almost worth the $50 for the pi just for the webcam hosting alone. I am excited to watch the print from inside the house on my tablet!