Manual contents

🔗 Connection types

Not every printer lets itself be read the same way. Some tell you a lot about themselves and others almost nothing; some accept commands and others ignore them; some have an accessible camera and others don't.

This page explains what you can expect from each connection type. To look up your specific model, go to Compatible printers; for the summary of what we offer and what we don't, see ⚠️ What we can and can't do.

Summary

When you register a printer over the local network, BolloPrint asks you for the printer's Protocol. These are the ones available today:

Type	Which machines it covers	Does it ask for a password?	Camera	Commands
Bambu cloud	Bambu Lab, through the manufacturer's cloud	Your Bambu account	❌	❌ Read-only
Bambu Lab (local network)	Bambu Lab, over your network	Yes, the LAN access code	✅	❌ Read-only
Klipper	Everything running Klipper with Moonraker reachable: QIDI, Sovol, Voron, RatRig, Two Trees, Artillery, Snapmaker U1, Creality K1…	Only if you set one yourself	✅ if it has a webcam	✅
PrusaLink	Prusa MK4, MK3.5, MK3.9, MINI, XL, CORE One	Yes, the one the printer displays	⚠️ Not yet	✅
SDCP	Elegoo resin machines, Elegoo Centauri Carbon and machines with a networked ChituBox board (some Longer models)	No	✅ on the models that have one	✅
Elegoo (local MQTT)	Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2	Only if you set a code on the machine	✅	⚠️ Not yet
FlashForge	Adventurer 5M and 5M Pro, AD5X, Creator 5	Yes, the code on the screen	✅	⚠️ Not yet

If a printer's record says "Read-only", it means that over that route and with that firmware we can't send it commands. We can read it perfectly well; the Pause, Resume and Cancel buttons are greyed out, with a padlock and the reason.

The quirks of each one

☁️ Bambu cloud

Read-only, always. Bambu's firmware ignores commands that don't come from its own programs. We'd rather not show a button the machine isn't going to obey.
No camera. The sliced-file image of the job in progress does come through, which is the preview, not what's happening inside.
Its issues do come through (Bambu's HMS warnings), with their severity and their link to the manufacturer's wiki.
It needs internet in your workshop and at Bambu.
The session with Bambu expires now and then and you have to connect the account again.

🎋 Bambu Lab over the local network

You have to enable LAN Mode on the printer's screen. That's what makes the machine show its access code.
⚠️ The code changes every time you enable or disable LAN Mode or Developer mode. If it suddenly stopped connecting, this is almost always why.
⚠️ No pause, resume or cancel this way either, and it's not an oversight. Recent Bambu firmware requires commands to be signed with Bambu's own signature. Without it the printer accepts the connection, accepts the command and does nothing — no error and no warning. We'd rather not give you a button the machine will silently ignore.
The X1 series needs a microSD card inserted to print in LAN mode. That's a Bambu requirement, not ours.
From the AMS you get the humidity (in %), whether it's drying and the name of each unit (for example "AMS 2 Pro" or "AMS HT"). The same over the cloud.
The P1P, P1S, A1 and A1 mini don't measure the chamber temperature, so that figure doesn't appear on their page, whichever way they're connected.
The A1 and P1 machines allow very few connections at a time. If you have the phone app or the slicer connected, the printer accepts our connection and then sends nothing: you'll see it as "connected but not sending data".
Camera: yes, on every model that has one. ⚠️ But it allows a single connection at a time, just like the Centauri Carbon 2: with Bambu Studio or the phone app watching it, our photo at that moment fails. If the record says no photo has arrived, close the others and look again.

🔧 Klipper

It's the type that covers the most machines, because it isn't a brand: it's the firmware inside a great many printers and every self-built one. We connect to Moonraker, the Klipper service behind its web page (Mainsail or Fluidd); it has to be reachable from the agent's computer.
Creality: only the K1 machines with Moonraker reachable. The K2, Ender-3 V3 and Hi with their factory firmware not yet (see Compatible printers).
It normally doesn't ask for a password. Only if you configured an access key in your Klipper.
The camera comes from your own configuration: if you have a webcam registered in Klipper, we use it; if not, there isn't one.
If your Klipper runs on an ordinary PC with no serial number of its own, we recognize it by the physical address of its network card (the MAC). ⚠️ That's why, if you switch that PC from Wi-Fi to cable, or change its network card, it may show up as a new printer.

🟠 PrusaLink (Prusa)

It works with modern Prusa machines (MK4, MK3.5, MK3.9, MINI, XL, CORE One). The MK3S and earlier, no: those don't talk over the network by themselves.
It asks for the password the printer itself displays in its menu.
No camera yet. It's not that the Prusa one doesn't work: it's that it's a separate device, with its own network address, that doesn't know which printer it belongs to — nor does the printer know it has it. Only you can say which camera goes with which machine, so it will need linking by hand from the printer's record. That option is planned and isn't available yet.
The sliced-file image of what it's printing does come through.

🧪 SDCP (Elegoo resin and ChituBox boards)

SDCP is the network language of ChituBox boards. It covers Elegoo's resin range (Mars, Saturn, Jupiter), the Elegoo Centauri Carbon and machines from other brands fitted with the same board, if they're networked.
The Centauri Carbon is a filament printer even though it speaks the same language as the resin ones, and its page is the filament one. What material it has loaded (its CFS) doesn't come through yet: the page says "Doesn't report its material".
It asks for no password at all. Worth knowing: anyone on your network can read that printer, not just us.
Camera on the models that have one.

🟢 Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2

It's from the same brand as the resin machines but it works differently, which is why it's listed separately.
It asks for a password only if you set a code on the machine's screen.
⚠️ Its camera allows a single connection at a time. If someone is watching it from their phone, our photo at that moment fails — and that's right: whoever is standing in front of the machine takes priority.

🔵 FlashForge

It works with the Adventurer 5M, 5M Pro, AD5X and Creator 5. The previous generation (Guider, Finder, Adventurer 3 and 4) not yet.
It asks for the check code that appears on the printer's screen.
The AD5X's material station (IFS) isn't visible yet: you get the material in the nozzle, not the one in each tray.
Camera on the models that have one.

Limits that apply to all of them

We don't send jobs to print. The file is sent from your slicer, as always. BolloPrint reads what's happening and records it.

The camera is a photo, not a video. An image of the inside is taken roughly every 3 minutes, and only while the machine is printing or paused. From the printer's page you can also take a photo right away or turn the camera on, which asks for one every 15 seconds and switches itself off after 5 minutes. When the job finishes, the last photo stays associated with that print. It isn't video surveillance: it's seeing at a glance whether things are still going well.

Weight and material length are estimates. They come from the slicer's calculation, not from a scale. No home printer weighs what it uses.

Every active printer takes up a slot in your plan, whichever route it comes in by.

If a printer stops being reachable, nothing is deleted. It stays in the list with its number, its name and its full history, and it comes back as soon as you reconnect it.

What about mine?

Look it up in Compatible printers: every manufacturer and model is there, with whether it can be connected today and how.