CrealityPi was a Raspberry Pi system image from 📝Creality, customized on the basis of 📝OctoPrint, that let users remotely control and monitor a 3D printer. It ran on a 📝Raspberry Pi connected to the printer and paired with the Creality Cloud app. Creality has since taken it offline: its Creality Cloud tutorial states that the method of installing CrealityPi on a Raspberry Pi is no longer available and recommends the Creality Cloud OctoPrint plugin instead.
That tutorial, published by the Creality Cloud account in January 2022, introduced what Creality called a fully upgraded CrealityPi; its original steps remain on the page, struck through. Setup used balenaEtcher to flash the downloaded CrealityPi firmware onto a formatted TF card, which then went into the Raspberry Pi. The printer connected to the Pi by USB cable, a supported webcam was optional, and the Pi took about 2 minutes to start up. Network setup ran through the Creality Cloud app over Bluetooth: under Device, users added a Raspberry Pi, selected a device named CrealityPi-xxx and chose a Wi-Fi network, after which prints could start from the app. The recommended replacement, the Creality Cloud plugin, is installed from within the OctoPrint interface and connects the Creality Cloud app to the Raspberry Pi so prints can run through the app.
Key Features
- No parameter configuration — Creality said users could get started directly without any parameter configuration.
- Bluetooth network setup — The Creality Cloud app connected CrealityPi to Wi-Fi over Bluetooth and showed the Raspberry Pi's IP address.
- Creality Cloud plugins inside — The image shipped with Creality Cloud's OctoPrint plugins built in.
- Customized flash tools — Creality described setup as easy by using customized flash tools.