PrintPi Cloud · in the making

Your printer.
Anywhere.

PrintPi is the print server I built for my own printer. A Raspberry Pi at the printer, a dashboard on any screen. Now it is becoming a service: the same dashboard, hosted, with your printer paired to it. Start a print from the office. Watch it finish from the sofa.

See what it does How it works→
  • Any Marlin printer over USB
  • Camera, timelapse, postcard
  • Nothing to open on your router
The PrintPi dashboard during a print: a live 3D view of the part, temperatures, the camera and the job's progress
Original Prusa MK4SMK3S+MINI+Creality Ender 3AnycubicArtillerySovolany Marlin printer over USBPrusaSlicerOrcaSlicerSuperSlicerCura Original Prusa MK4SMK3S+MINI+Creality Ender 3AnycubicArtillerySovolany Marlin printer over USBPrusaSlicerOrcaSlicerSuperSlicerCura

Print

Start it from the office.

Send the file straight from PrusaSlicer, OrcaSlicer, SuperSlicer or Cura, or drop it on the page. Look at every layer in 3D before a single gram of filament moves, pick the spool, hit print. Pause, cancel, print it again.

The 3D preview of a G-code file, coloured by feature

Watch

Watch it from the sofa.

A live 3D view follows the nozzle through the file, the camera shows the real thing with sound, and the time left is a real number, not the slicer's guess. Every layer becomes a frame of the timelapse.

The print history with every print's picture, time and filament

Done

Know when it's done.

A message on Telegram with a picture, a webhook for the rest of your house, and a postcard for every print: the photo, the time, the filament, the energy it took. Ready to share.

The postcard of a finished print with its picture, time, filament and energy

Filament

Know what you have.

Every spool with what is left on it, counted down while you print. A colour card of your whole shelf. Loading, unloading and changing filament as a walkthrough, on the phone or on the screen at the printer.

A colour card of every spool in the inventory

Plugins

See what the printer sees.

The bed mesh as a surface, high and low spots in colour. Tapo and Kasa plugs that power the printer on and off. An LED strip, Bluetooth hygrometers in the filament box, and a plugin you write yourself in a few lines of Python.

The bed mesh drawn as a surface, high and low spots in colour

At the printer

A screen that means it.

A 7" touch display next to the printer runs the same PrintPi: status, files, filament, moving the head, the camera. Big buttons for dirty fingers, and a stop button you have to slide, so nothing cancels a print by accident.

The touch panel's home screen with the clock, temperatures, the spool and the camera
The touch panel during a print with the part, the time left and a slider to cancel

How it works

Something small at the printer.

A USB cable does not reach the internet, so a Raspberry Pi sits at the printer and does the talking. Everything else lives in the cloud.

  1. Flash the Pi

    Put the image on any Raspberry Pi from the Zero 2 up and plug the printer in. A Linux box, a NAS with Docker or the computer next to the printer work too.

  2. Type the code

    The Pi shows a short code, you type it into PrintPi, and the printer is yours. No port forwarding, no VPN, nothing to open on your router.

  3. Print from anywhere

    Phone, laptop, the screen at the printer, all the same PrintPi. And the Pi keeps printing when the internet does not.

Soon.

PrintPi runs at my printer every day. PrintPi Cloud is what I am building next, and this page will tell you when it opens.

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