UM3 Is there a remote control interface?

[Ferryy 0]

I am a happy user of a Ultimaker 3 Extended. Recently I have been exploring the network options to manage prints remotely. Sending prints from Cura works great, and in the monitor tab (and digital factory website) I can see basic info such as print progress % and queue.

 

What surprises me is that I have no way of interacting with the printer using these interfaces. Features such as pausing/aborting a print and looking at the webcam are particularly useful now that working from home is more common, allowing the start or interrupt of a print remotely.

 

After some more research I discovered the API and interface to send these kind of commands and watch the webcam stream. My workaround for now is to remote desktop access a nearby PC and use the browser on that to control it, but it feels like a bit of unnecessary overhead.

 

I understand that the UM3 is relatively old and has less functions then the newer S3/S5's, but since the API appears to allow these functions why are they not integrated in Cura and Digital Factory?

 

The old but helpful forum post series I found about the API control 

 

[Smithy 1,146]

Digital Factory is relatively new, at least in the form we have now. Ultimaker once said in a thread that this is just the beginning and more in this direction is to be expected.

[Ferryy 0]

Ah perhaps that is why. It surprises me that this functionality doesn't exist for a printer which is out for so long already. I noticed that you @Smithy already made the same comment about the limited functionality more then a year ago, so clearly this has no priority for Ultimaker.  

 

Are there perhaps any other (community) interfaces that can be used to control the API? I would not think that I am the first one that would like this functionality, so perhaps a handy programmer already made an interface which is more convenient then the 'swagger UI' (located at <IP-address>/docs/api/ ).

 

Also, I just now discovered there is a dedicated Digital Factory Forum page. If this post is more appropriate there, feel free to migrate it since I probably cannot do that myself.

[robinmdh 100]

1 hour ago, Ferryy said:

Ah perhaps that is why. It surprises me that this functionality doesn't exist for a printer which is out for so long already. I noticed that you @Smithy already made the same comment about the limited functionality more then a year ago, so clearly this has no priority for Ultimaker.

We've had a local queue and print management for quite a few years now it was first called cura connect now it's called digital factory but pausing, aborting and checking the camera has been there for most of that time, it's only limited to the local network. The Cloud is quickly catching up to those features though so don't worry.

Edited July 29, 2020 by robinmdh

[ctbeke 133]

5 hours ago, robinmdh said:

We've had a local queue and print management for quite a few years now it was first called cura connect now it's called digital factory but pausing, aborting and checking the camera has been there for most of that time, it's only limited to the local network. The Cloud is quickly catching up to those features though so don't worry.

 

The cloud-based Digital Factory currently supports all the features that Cura Connect had in the local network, with the exception of printer analytics (but this in progress). You need the latest firmware for S3 or S5. UM3 has limited support due to the lower frequency of firmware updates for that (older) machine.

 

All our cloud-based products have APIs though, so data that might not be visible in our user interfaces yet might be available in an API, and you could hook up your own front-end to it.