Technical Frustration

I've had a migraine on and off for two days, which is neither here nor there, what I'm frustrated about is the inability for us to get technical things working.  We have so much working that I shouldn't complain, but there are key things I need to have functioning properly in order for us to do the work we need to do and we just can't get them working. 

We've been each working on our own parts of the printer setup, which has so many pieces to it it is a positive to say that the printers are working, we have a location in which we now have them housed that can can be blocked out so that we can do long prints without light or other changes in the surrounding area affecting the appearance inside the location they're stored.  We can get into and out of the individual print location for two printers now with ease.  

We can send prints remotely from the computer, meaning we don't have to slice the model, store it on an SD card, walk over to the printer with the SD card and start the print.   We can send a model and start a print from the desk without having to get up.   We can watch the prints being printed on a web browser from anywhere and if something is going wrong, we can stop the print so the printer isn't damaged and filament isn't wasted.

There is a problem that is the last piece of the puzzle and that is we can't get the timelapse functionality working.   I can print a model and show the completed results, but seeing the model being printed in timelapse form is one of the most interesting and popular things we do.   People love them.   Getting quality timelapse videos requires that environmental control we have ready and waiting, but we can't get the timelapse itself to work. 

There have been so many issues along the way.  The current situation is we can start a timelapse.  We have the camera working too, which was a big part of the challenge.  When it is time to take a picture, the camera now takes a picture.   And all is well for the first layer.   But for some reason after that, no filament comes out of the nozzle.   It is the strangest error.  The print is going on as you would expect it to, but the filament isn't advancing.   Everything works until the first picture is taken, and then it just refuses to work.  

I've been holding off on starting prints on this new, huge printer my husband decided to buy, because we want to get exciting timelapse videos of models that are so large they take two, three or even four days to print.   I haven't started printing anything on the printer because if I do, we can't work on the timelapse problem until the very long print completes.   

Tonight I got frustrated and decided to just start something.  New models have been released that people are very excited to see.  My peers are printing them and running livestreams on TikTok and I'm doing nothing at all, for two weeks now, while we try to get this overall setup and recording worked out.   I'm at my wits end, as is my husband.  We'll get it, eventually, I hope. 

The Laundry Monster:  My son hates folding laundry.  He fought doing it for hours today.  It is exhausting to fight him on this.  But he never wins.  I wonder when he is going to get that he won't win and just do his laundry?

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter had friends over in the back yard today *and* a request to go over to Ashley's house.  She was so happy, friends to play with two days in a row.    She has a teacher workday tomorrow but I don't think anyone near her is off school as well so she will be home without peers tomorrow.