Zwakie

You are so right: there is simply no way you can get a bell to whistle reliably by "guesstimating" it from usage data collected by software. Imho some small and cheap pieces of hardware (IR sender + receiver or something similar) plus a little programming is all that you need to have a reliable "out-of-filament" notification system. Goes without saying that the software piece also has to put things on hold when the alarm is raised, and needs to go through the normal hoops of loading it up, purging, etc.

Thanks for the tip Korneel, I will contact them tonight. (unfortunately that won't help me much until I get the USB thingie fixed, but I trust that will not take too long ) @Neotko: I will tread carefully if and when I open the machine, thanks for the warning!

Being a specialist in using barcodes and rfid tags in logistics environments. I am quite familiar with this stuff I was using the spools provided with the printer, so they should have those tags. Can I visually check if the tags are actually present on the spools? From the first booting up it did not recognize the tags, so yes, even with the first print I had to select the material for both spools manually using UM3's menu. I know S3D has no profile yet for the UM3, I created my own for the UM3 with the limited knowledge that I have of this machine - this of course will be replaced once S3D publishes one. A little side-step, but while we're at it: do you provide input to S3D on the basis of which they create profiles, or is this S3D does without consulting UM? All I get when I hit the print option in the menu is the instructions to insert the USB drive. I verified that the USB drive can be read on my MacBook and a MS Windows machine. I will test with another USB drive tonight and let you know how that works out. Could it be as simple as a USB connector behind the floor-panel loosened (similar to what I read here about someone who's camera did not work because of a loose USB cable connection)?

My first long print (36+ hrs) was for a material-combination not (yet?) suggested (PETG @208C plus PVA for support), and the print came up flawlessly. Very impressed with the result, both finish and accuracy! After almost of week of playing around with my UM3 I did however run into two issues: 1. NFC tags of the filament that came with the printer are not detected. Checked and reseated the connector a few times, no success in getting it to 'see' the tags though. 2. Last night I wanted to print from a gcode file created by Simplify3D, to find that the machine does not see the USB flashdrive that came with the printer. Reformatting the drive on my MacBook Pro in different file formats did not help. Now that I'm writing this I realize that I have not looked for a UM3 menu-option to initialize the drive, I will have a look tonight to see if that brings anything... Any idea on the best approach on how to get these things resolved by myself? (first try that, if that does not work I will initiate the troubleshooting process through my reseller)

I was afraid that at this point in the UM3's lifecycle that would be the case. Good to hear however that a solution will be there shortly! Until then, the M142 workaround will do... Thank you for your elaborate and honest answer to my question.

Today I received my UM3, did a first testprint in PLA and was very impressed with the easy way to get going. Dimming the LEDs using M142 should be breeze when sending the gcode over to the printer, but how about dimming the lights DURING a printjob? I have kicked of a 36 hr job, and would love to be able to activate/deactive the LEDs on the fly.