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The main feature is being able to remotely check up on your 3D prints and cancel them if they've gone wrong as well as being able to print remotely. These are a

The main feature is being able to remotely check up on your 3D prints and cancel them if they've gone wrong as well as being able to print remotely. These are actually fairly useful which is why people do buy them, though you could make it work without cloud connections.

gumballindie 3y ago
A lan connection and a raspberry pi will do that just fine. Plugin a webcam and the USB connector of the printer. Been doing this >10 years ago and i was able to upload print models, monitor progress, and cancel. Use USB hubs if you have more than one printer.
- Filligree 3y ago
  And then you also set up a VPN connection to your phone, mess with certificates and whatnot? Though you’ll also need to use some form of cloud system to get past CGNAT, since you probably have that on both ends. My ISP hasn’t provided IP addresses in years. Most people just want a printer, not two new hobbies.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    Why do you want to operate your printer when you're not on your LAN? I certainly have no control over my printer (other than the power switch) from the Outside World. I consider this to be a security feature.
    - anonymousab 3y ago
      > Why do you want to operate your printer when you're not on your LAN? Checking the progress of your prints remotely and stopping them if something has gone wrong. There's options for spaghetti detection and so on, but those aren't perfect, and other kinds of failures can happen.
      - jrockway 3y ago
        I don't leave the house when I have something printing. You can't extinguish a fire with a remote power switch.
        sudosysgen 3y ago
        The point of these printers is to be reliable and accessible enough that you don't have to worry about that, just like you don't worry about supervising your drier. Just like most appliances, a 3D printer will only catch fire in the case of a serious hardware malfunction or egregious user error. The point is for this to be rare enough that the risk is negligible, so all you'd worry about is your print failing.
        nomel 3y ago
        Considering many of my prints are multi day, this is just silly. I can’t stay home for days. I put my printer in a place where it’s free to burn completely. Any other way is not safe. Safety is about prevention, not attention.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    Ngrok does the trick. It's straightfoward. And people that do 3D printers are usually happy to hack a bit here and there.
    - PLG88 3y ago
      zrok.io is a nice open source alternative with free SaaS if you are interested. I work on the project.
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  The point is that you don't want this to just be on LAN, you would want to be able to this from anywhere. That way if you're at work or going out you can still do that. If you wanted it to just be on LAN, you can just disable the cloud features, but for many people that's a big selling point. You can make it work over the internet without a cloud connection, but it's fiddly and requires set-up (port forwarding or hole punching). People don't want that, and Bambu's value proposition is zero-tweaking at high performance - otherwise you'd go for another model.
- anonymousab 3y ago
  It is completely doable, and there's a lot of good software and tutorials to get it done. But there's all sorts of things that could complicate that process. For instance, with my last 3d printer, I had to open it up and jump some pins on the mainboard, and then had to get a specific piece of (cheap and readily available) USB hardware to write to it from a laptop - and even then, it only worked from a specific USB port on some of my machines, because of weird USB host incompatibilities. And my 3d printer was one of the most common buy-this-one-first products of its time! Oh, and there was also some weirdness with the PSU as well that somehow caused flakiness when powering up the webcam when I tried to share power for the pi with the printer itself. I'm comfortable with troubleshooting that, but I wouldn't expect nor even want the average person to have to bother with that kind of stuff. So the appeal/marketing of the Bambu products is that it's not something for tinkerers - it's something that the average person can just setup and immediately get reliable prints, with all the bells and whistles on top of it. In other words, the idea is that it (quite literally) "just works". Even with the drawbacks that we all know about proprietary devices and cloud services, it does its job for the average person. The positive side of all this is that Bambu's relative success means a bit of pressure on the other leaders in the 3D printing space, and we can see that they're all iterating quickly and well to compete in aspects where they may have been resting on their laurels before.
  - Etrnl_President 3y ago
    > I had to open it up and jump some pins on the mainboard, and then had to get a specific piece of [hardware] I had to do that for almost every new game and hardware upgrade on my old 386. Welcome to the club, pal.

gumballindie 3y ago

A lan connection and a raspberry pi will do that just fine. Plugin a webcam and the USB connector of the printer. Been doing this >10 years ago and i was able to upload print models, monitor progress, and cancel. Use USB hubs if you have more than one printer.

Filligree 3y ago
And then you also set up a VPN connection to your phone, mess with certificates and whatnot? Though you’ll also need to use some form of cloud system to get past CGNAT, since you probably have that on both ends. My ISP hasn’t provided IP addresses in years. Most people just want a printer, not two new hobbies.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Why do you want to operate your printer when you're not on your LAN? I certainly have no control over my printer (other than the power switch) from the Outside World. I consider this to be a security feature.
  - anonymousab 3y ago
    > Why do you want to operate your printer when you're not on your LAN? Checking the progress of your prints remotely and stopping them if something has gone wrong. There's options for spaghetti detection and so on, but those aren't perfect, and other kinds of failures can happen.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      I don't leave the house when I have something printing. You can't extinguish a fire with a remote power switch.
      - sudosysgen 3y ago
        The point of these printers is to be reliable and accessible enough that you don't have to worry about that, just like you don't worry about supervising your drier. Just like most appliances, a 3D printer will only catch fire in the case of a serious hardware malfunction or egregious user error. The point is for this to be rare enough that the risk is negligible, so all you'd worry about is your print failing.
      - nomel 3y ago
        Considering many of my prints are multi day, this is just silly. I can’t stay home for days. I put my printer in a place where it’s free to burn completely. Any other way is not safe. Safety is about prevention, not attention.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Ngrok does the trick. It's straightfoward. And people that do 3D printers are usually happy to hack a bit here and there.
  - PLG88 3y ago
    zrok.io is a nice open source alternative with free SaaS if you are interested. I work on the project.
sudosysgen 3y ago
The point is that you don't want this to just be on LAN, you would want to be able to this from anywhere. That way if you're at work or going out you can still do that. If you wanted it to just be on LAN, you can just disable the cloud features, but for many people that's a big selling point. You can make it work over the internet without a cloud connection, but it's fiddly and requires set-up (port forwarding or hole punching). People don't want that, and Bambu's value proposition is zero-tweaking at high performance - otherwise you'd go for another model.
anonymousab 3y ago
It is completely doable, and there's a lot of good software and tutorials to get it done. But there's all sorts of things that could complicate that process. For instance, with my last 3d printer, I had to open it up and jump some pins on the mainboard, and then had to get a specific piece of (cheap and readily available) USB hardware to write to it from a laptop - and even then, it only worked from a specific USB port on some of my machines, because of weird USB host incompatibilities. And my 3d printer was one of the most common buy-this-one-first products of its time! Oh, and there was also some weirdness with the PSU as well that somehow caused flakiness when powering up the webcam when I tried to share power for the pi with the printer itself. I'm comfortable with troubleshooting that, but I wouldn't expect nor even want the average person to have to bother with that kind of stuff. So the appeal/marketing of the Bambu products is that it's not something for tinkerers - it's something that the average person can just setup and immediately get reliable prints, with all the bells and whistles on top of it. In other words, the idea is that it (quite literally) "just works". Even with the drawbacks that we all know about proprietary devices and cloud services, it does its job for the average person. The positive side of all this is that Bambu's relative success means a bit of pressure on the other leaders in the 3D printing space, and we can see that they're all iterating quickly and well to compete in aspects where they may have been resting on their laurels before.
- Etrnl_President 3y ago
  > I had to open it up and jump some pins on the mainboard, and then had to get a specific piece of [hardware] I had to do that for almost every new game and hardware upgrade on my old 386. Welcome to the club, pal.