FlashAirScripts

Python scripts to access a wi-fi enabled Toshiba FlashAir SD card

Toshiba FlashAir cards are SD cards that are accessible over wi-fi.

(This SD card has a wireless access point plus a CPU running a web server on Linux. Isn't that amazing?)

This has been tested on Debian Linux with a W-04 version card. Only W-03 and W-04 cards are compatible.

I have a Prusa i3 MK3 3D printer that's great, but it prefers to print from an SD card. This necessitated a lot of physical swapping and frustration with cheap USB card readers, and remembering to umount the card filesystem before pulling it out.

It turns out that the webDAV support on this card is rather unreliable and Linux webDAV clients are poor as well, but it's very good at HTTP commands. These are documented at https://www.flashair-developers.com/en/documents/api/

I wrote 4 scripts:

• sdls - list the contents of the card

  % sdls
  Directory: /
  Binder_Spool_Clip_v1-0.gcode        410,730 401.10 KB 2018-08-02 13:34:20
  Shim.gcode                          313,291 305.95 KB 2018-08-25 05:11:28
  filament_clip.gcode                 702,319 685.86 KB 2018-08-25 05:12:16
  ---------------------------- -------------- ---------
  Dir Total:                        1,426,340   1.36 MB
  Used:                             1,638,400   1.56 MB  0.01%
  Free:                        31,992,512,512  29.80 GB 99.99%

• sdput - copy files from local storage to the card

  sdput Nozzle_Cone.gcode LPT_Spool.gcode

  To create a directory, you just specify it, and if it doesn't exist, it will be created. You can only do one level at a time.

  sdput -d gcode LPT_Spool.gcode creates the "gcode" directory and puts the "LPT_Spool.gcode" file in it.

  sdput -d dir1/dir2 diary.txt will fail if "dir1" doesn't already exist.

• sdrm - delete files/directories from the card

  A directory must be empty before it can be deleted.

  sdrm "*.gcode" deletes all files with a "gcode" extension in the current directory - note that you have to quote the glob to prevent it from being expanded locally by the shell.

  sdrm Nozzle_Cone.gcode LPT_Spool.gcode deletes the two given files.

• sdtree - display tree of files/directories from the card

├─ arm.gcode
├─ body.gcode
├─ dir1
│  ├─ aaa
│  ├─ bbb
│  ├─ dir2
│  │  ├─ dir3
│  │  │  ├─ dir4
│  │  │  │  └─ xxx
│  │  │  ├─ file3
│  │  │  └─ test
│  │  ├─ dirxxx
│  │  ├─ diryyy
│  │  └─ file2
│  └─ file1
├─ head.gcode
├─ leg-1.gcode
├─ leg-2.gcode
└─ robot.gcode

The scripts take optional arguments:

-a ADDRESS, --address ADDRESS specifies the address of the card on your network. You can either use the raw IP address, or you can usually assign a hostname through your router.

-d DIRECTORY, --directory DIRECTORY specifies the working directory.

-h, --help displays help.

These are saved to a configuration file (~/.flashair) so you don't have to retype them constantly. This means you only need to specify the card address once, and it's remembered. This also means the current working directory "sticks" across invocations as well.

Setting up the scripts

Copy these scripts to /usr/local/bin and mark them executable

chmod a+x sdls sdrm sdput sdtree

Copy flashair.py to somewhere in sys.path, such as /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages

Install Python 3.x Install the httpx package (https://www.python-httpx.org) Install the tqdm package (https://tqdm.github.io) You can install packages using whatever package manager you use (e.g. pip, apt get, etc)

Setting up the card

Mount your card in your PC. The config configuration file is in the sd_wlan directory.

Rename the file to something like "config.orig". Don't just delete it or overwrite it, as you'll need to copy the values of several variables from it.

Copy my version of the file to this directory, and modify these values:

• APPSSID and APPNETWORKKEY are the name and password of your wireless network. The card only does 2.4GHz, so it won't show up on a 5GHz system. It tolerates blanks but it doesn't accept non-ASCII characters in the network name. Note that APPNETWORKKEY becomes a row of asterisks after the first time the card connects successfully to the network.

• Copy the values of CID and VERSION from your old "config" file. Don't screw these up, as you'll have to reinitialize your card with the buggy and annoying Toshiba software.

Unmount the card and remove it from the reader. When you put it back in, it will use the new configuration, so it should appear on the network. You should see it on your router's list of attached devices. Try "sdls" to see if it communicates without errors.

Warning

Do not upload a file during a print, as that locks out the printer during the upload, so it can't read the gcode and it will crash.