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Raspberry Pi Zero W as a Wifi connected SMB available USB Drive

This is NOT my work, I started at: https://makerfun3d.com/pizerow-wifi-thumbdrive-send-photon-files-over-the-network and downloaded the 400meg zip file containing a preconfigured SD Image.  After burning the image file onto the SD card I created an empty file on the "boot" partition named "ssh".  That enabled me, after booting up the pi, to log in over SSH and use "sudo raspi-config" to configure the wireless network; I left everything else as default.

This turns the Raspberry Pi Zero W into a WIFI connected, network shared (SMB) USB thumb drive.  I used an old micro USB charging cable to connect the OTG port on the Pi to the USB port of the 3D printer or other computer.

The 2.4GHz WIFI, SMB sharing, and Raspberry Pi Zero W itself, all contribute to a very SLOW but fully functional experience when transferring files to/from the Pi.  Once the files are available from the Pi's USB OTG port, the performance has been comparable to any cheap USB 2.0 thumb drive: slow but useable.

This process takes less than 5 minutes:

  • Save the sliced "print file" to the shared network folder on the Pi's SD card (Begin Transfer)
  • Turn on the printer's chamber heater
  • Shake and pour resin into the VAT (Transfer completed)
  • Plug the Pi's OTG USB cable into the Printer
  • Select the desired file using the printer interface
  • Tell it to Print Now!