How to Update OctoPrint

howchoo   (467)

August 22, 2023

4 minutes

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3D Printing

3dprinting • 36 guides

OctoPrint

octoprint • 10 guides

• 
  Add an OctoPrint Touchscreen
• 
  OctoPrint Plugins
• 
  Add an OctoPrint Dark Theme
• 
  OctoPrint Cameras
• 
  Updating OctoPrint

This short guide will show you how to update or upgrade OctoPrint and OctoPi on your Raspberry Pi. Updating is important to keep your setup running smoothly. Updates generally include bug fixes, security patches, and new features.

This process is actually super easy and largely automated.

1 – Back up your SD card

As with any update process, it’s recommended that you back up your Raspberry Pi just in case. Fortunately, we have a guide for that!

• Windows users: Back up your Raspberry Pi in Windows
• Mac users: Back up your Raspberry Pi in MacOS

How to Back Up a Raspberry Pi SD Card in Windows
Create a Pi backup using Windows.

How to Back Up and Restore Your Raspberry Pi SD Card on Mac
Easily backup, restore, or clone your SD card!

2 – Check for updates

Open the OctoPrint interface in your browser, as you normally would. If there’s an update available, a modal will appear automatically.

OctoPrint: Control Your 3D Printer Remotely with Raspberry Pi and OctoPi
Untether your printer!

3 – Perform the update

Click Update now to begin the update process. Then, click Proceed to confirm.

4 – Reload your browser

OctoPrint will prompt you when it’s time to reload your browser. If you run into any issues, simply restore your SD card backup using an application such as Etcher.

You’re all done!

How to Update Blender

howchoo   (467)

November 24, 2023

How to Change Your Mac Computer’s Bluetooth Name

howchoo   (467)

August 22, 2023

3 minutes

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apple • 18 guides

Mac OS X

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MacOS

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I have a pair of wireless bluetooth headphones that states the name of the device it’s connecting to — and with a long or unrecognizable name, this is quite annoying.

This short guide will teach you how to change your computer’s bluetooth name in MacOS and OS X.

1 – Open System Preferences

Navigate to Apple Icon > System Preferences.

2 – Access Sharing Preferences

Click the Sharing icon.

3 – Change your Mac’s Computer Name

In the Computer Name field, enter the new name you’d like to use. Your Mac’s Computer Name is also its bluetooth name, as well as its network sharing name. Change this to whatever you’d like you computer’s new bluetooth device name to be. The name is saved immediately after changing it — there is no save button. 🙂

4 – Renaming other bluetooth devices/accessories in MacOS and OS X

You can also change the name of your bluetooth devices themselves (headphones, etc.) To do this. return to system preferences, click the Bluetooth icon, right click a device and select Rename.

How to Enable the “Popping” Sound When Adjusting the Volume on Your Mac

howchoo   (467)

December 13, 2023

How to Double-Click the Title Bar to Minimize an Application on Mac

howchoo   (467)

August 22, 2023

1 minutes

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Mac

mac • 24 guides

Mac OS X

osx • 6 guides

MacOS

macos • 20 guides

Want to minimize an application by double-clicking its title bar? Here’s how to do it.

1 – Open Dock in System Preferences

Navigate to System Preferences > Dock.

2 – Change the title bar behavior

Select the checkbox next to “Double-click a window’s title bar to..” and select “minimize” as the option in its dropdown.

Did you know you can also minimize applications in macOS by double-clicking the menu bar? Check out our guide to see how it’s done.

How to Enable the “Popping” Sound When Adjusting the Volume on Your Mac

howchoo   (467)

December 13, 2023

Using the iTerm 2 and tmux integration

howchoo (467)

August 22, 2023

5 minutes

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Linux

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tmux

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Unix

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tmux -CC

tmux -CC attach

1 – Install tmux and iTerm2

brew install tmux

apt-get install tmux

2 – Start new tmux session using -CC option

tmux -CC

3 – Open new tabs and windows

4 – Detaching tmux

5 – Attach to an existing tmux session

tmux -CC attach

How to Install SSHFS

howchoo (467)

September 29, 2023

How to Replace the Filter on Your Roomba i7

howchoo   (467)

August 22, 2023

4 minutes

What you’ll need

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iRobot Roomba i7 x 1

iRobot e and i series replacement filters x 1

Howchoo is reader-supported. As an Amazon Associate, we may earn a small affiliate commission at no cost to you when you buy through our links.

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Robot Vacuum

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Roomba

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Your Roomba i7 vacuum filter will need to be cleaned every few weeks and replaced every two months. This short guide will show you how to remove and replace (or clean) your Roomba vacuum filter.

1 – Remove the dust bin

To remove the dust bin, simply push the tab at the side of the bin. Pushing the tab will pop the dust bin out, and it can be easily removed.

2 – Remove the old filter

You can remove the filter by pulling it straight out from the dust bin. Hold on to the dust bin one hand, and grab the edges of the filter with your other.

3 – Clean the filter and reuse it (optional)

You don’t need to replace the filter every time it gets dirty. In fact, you’ll want to clean the filter every week or so. At this point, you can clean the filter if you choose. To begin, tap the filter against the side of your garbage can to shake loose the dirt and debris. If you’d like, you can also spray the filter with compressed air or vacuum it to remove more of the dust.

4 – Put the new filter in place

Push the new (or cleaned) filter back in to the dust bin securely.

5 – Put the dust bin back in place

To put the dust bin back in place, start by place the hook into the opening. If the hook is in place properly, it acts as a hinge. Then, you can push the other side of the dust bin and lock it into place.

With the dust bin back in place, your Roomba i7 is ready for action! Next, learn how to unclog the Roomba i7 Clean Base.

How to Unclog Your Roomba i7+ Clean Base

How to Replace the Edge-Sweeping Brush on Your Roomba i7

howchoo   (467)

November 20, 2023

How to Remove Orphaned Volumes in Docker

howchoo   (467)

August 22, 2023

3 minutes

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Docker

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When using Docker sometimes it’s necessary to do some cleanup in order to free up space. I ran into an issue recently where I could not start my database container. The error message was:

db_1     | creating subdirectories ... initdb: could not create directory "/var/lib/postgresql/data/global": No space left on device

One simple way to free up space is to delete dangling or orphaned volumes. A dangling volume is a volume that is not referenced by any container.

1 – docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -qf dangling=true)

Let’s break this down.

First, if you want to see a list of the dangling volumes you can simply run:

docker volume ls -qf dangling=true

docker volume ls lists the volumes and -qf means list only the ids and filter on dangling=true.

To delete these volumes we’ll pass them in to the docker volume rm function which takes a volume id or list of ids. The final command is:

docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -qf dangling=true)

How to Run a Raspberry Pi Cluster with Docker Swarm

howchoo   (467)

September 20, 2023

Check Your Verizon Wireless Account Balance via Text

howchoo (467)

August 22, 2023

1 minutes

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Verizon

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Wireless

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• 
  Verizon Call Forwarding
• 
  Check Verizon Account Balance
• 
  Verizon Voicemail Setup

1 – Dial #BAL (#225) and press the Call button

2 – Check your text messages

How to Enable Verizon Call Forwarding

howchoo (467)

December 1, 2023

Xfinity Login: How to log in to your Xfinity account

howchoo   (467)

August 18, 2023

2 minutes

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Comcast

comcast • 7 guides

Internet

internet • 36 guides

This guide will provide instructions for getting logged in to your Comcast Xfinity account.

1 – Login page

If you know your username and password, you simply head over to the Xfinity login page on the Xfinity website to log in.

2 – Recover username or password

If you’ve lost your username or password, there’s hope.

Username

If you’ve lost your username, head to the account lookup page.

Password

If you’ve lost your password, you’ll need to reset it. You can do that on the password reset page.

3 – Create an account

If you don’t have an account, you can create one here.

4 – Contact support

At this point, if you can’t get logged in, contact support:

1 (800) 934-6489

How to Change Your Frontier WiFi Password

howchoo   (467)

November 25, 2023

Nested defaultdicts in Python

howchoo   (467)

August 18, 2023

8 minutes

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Code

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Python

python • 18 guides

While this requirement may seem rare, learning how to nest defaultdicts properly in Python can be extremely powerful and save you from bloated and confusing initialization code.

In this guide we’ll cover:

• What are nested dictionaries?
• What is a defaultdict, and when is it used?
• How can we create multi-level defaultdicts (or nested defaultdicts)?

If you’re already familiar with these concepts, feel free to skip ahead to step three.

We highly recommend you also read and learn about Python dictionary comprehension as well, after reviewing this guide.

1 – What is a nested dictionary?

In Python, a dictionary is a key-value map, and the value can contain any type. You can merge dictionaries and in this case, even nest them. A “nested” dictionary simply refers to a dictionary whose values are also dictionaries, and this pattern could be used for multiple levels.

Merge Dictionaries in Python

See the following example:

level_one = {
    'level_two': {
        'level_three': {
            'some_key': 'some_value' 
        }
    }
}

To access values in the terminal dictionary, you could use the following:

level_one['level_two']['level_three']['some_key']

2 – What is a defaultdict?

A defaultdict is a dictionary with some added functionality. The defaultdict allows us to specify a default type to return if a key doesn’t exist.

Typically, if you try to access a non-existent key in a dictionary, it will raise a KeyError. But sometimes, rather than raising an exception, we may want to return a default value instead. There are a few ways to accomplish this, but one powerful tool is the defaultdict. See the following:

from collections import defaultdict

my_dict = defaultdict(int)

We’ve instantiated a defaultdict and set the default type to int. This means if we try to access a key in my_dict that doesn’t exist, it will return the value of int() (which is 0).

This is very powerful for a few reasons!

It always returns a value

my_dict['tyler'] = 34

print(my_dict['tyler'])
# => 34

print(my_dict['nikki'])
# => 0

We can operate on any key without initializing it

What is even more valuable is that we can operate on keys without initializing them. Imagine we want to use a dictionary to keep track of players’ scores.

scores = defaultdict(int)

# Tyler scores one point
scores['tyler'] += 1

# Nikki scores two points
scores['nikki'] += 2

The code is much more concise. With a standard dictionary, we’d have to check if the key exists and initialize the values up front.

3 – Nested defaultdicts

Now that we understand nested dictionaries and defaultdicts, we can get into nested defaultdicts.

This is concept is extremely powerful as it allows you to build complex dictionaries with a simple initialization. The only caveat is that you need to know the depth of your data structure in advance. Also, you need to know the default type of the terminal values.

If you’re wondering how this concept will be useful, think about a situation where you’d want to use a defaultdict but you actually want the default type to be defaultdict.

The first thing we have to do is define our dictionary:

from collections import defaultdict

my_dict = defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(dict))

Notice that we have to use a lambda function as the argument to the first defaultdict. This is because defaultdict expects a callable (or None).

If necessary, we could take this concept as far as we need:

my_dict = defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(lambda: defaultdict(dict)))

Now, using our original example, we can easily populate our data structure without having to initialize each value.

my_dict['dogs']['rover']['bathed'] = True
my_dict['dogs']['rover']['fed'] = False
my_dict['cats']['sam']['fed'] = True

Secure Your Sensitive Data with Kubernetes Secrets

howchoo   (467)

November 26, 2023