If you have a Bambu Labs printer and aren’t keen to send your files to Bambu’s servers with each print job, then check out Bambuddy, an open-source, self-hosted, cloud-free central command that offers a local alternative for managing Bambu Labs printers. It acts as a replacement for the official cloud services, allowing you to slice, print, and monitor with full local control and zero reliance on Bambu Labs’ servers.
To use it, one installs Bambuddy, then puts their printer(s) into LAN-only mode. Doing this disables cloud functionality, including remote access. Then one enables Developer Mode, which allows external software to control printer functions via a machine API. Once that’s done, the printers can be added to Bambuddy.
Bambuddy then acts as a full-featured control panel and management center for anywhere from one to forty printers. It runs on Linux, macOS, or Windows, and a Raspberry Pi is a common install target.
Bambu Labs makes indisputably high-quality printers, and using their software and official app is certainly convenient. But the fact that every print job goes through Bambu’s servers, and a software architecture that frustrates home-grown solutions? Not so much. Add AGPLv3 violations and some heavy-handed legal behavior to the mix, and it’s easy to understand the motivation for an alternative to the factory software.
Bambuddy has a huge number of features — including an integrated slicer and proxy mode for remote access — and it may look a little intimidating at first. Fortunately, the project’s website offers a live sandbox demo with simulated printers, which should be right up the alley of those who prefer to learn by clicking around in a consequence-free environment.
I have never understood why the public has so willing embraced the mentality of “cloud servers” with the necessity for everything you do to be stored and or processed on someone else’s severs, when local side computing works just fine.
Its mostly for the convenience of easy access.
Its much harder to get a self-hosted setup that will let you use something away from your home network or have near no setup within network.
Possibly because it’s simpler for most people to set up with cloud using some app. Running things locally would mean extra networking config, remote access (port forwarding, DDNS), and keeping a server running
“Running things locally would mean extra networking config, remote access (port forwarding, DDNS), and keeping a server running”
Yeah thats the “justification” that cloud advocates use,
and it might have been valid back in the dialup days,
but lets be real, if you have a home PC its most likely ALWAYS on and ALWAYS online, so really, a well designed piece of software SHOULD be able to manage just fine.