Firmware 8.1.0 - Where did everything go?

[mrender 25]

Great firmware upgrade!  Would like to see the reprint functionality return to the local/non digital factory setup though please.

[mrender 25]

Great firmware upgrade!  Would like to see the reprint functionality return to the local/non digital factory setup though please.  Reprint button on the the machine UI screen would be perfect!

[jkcz 12]

We were also very unpleasantly surprised by the removal of all the browser based options - reprint and live feed will be sorely missed, along with the full history and some nice stats. Not sure why features that could be helpful to many people would be removed - adding is very much welcome and but why remove useful things? Now my team can't reprint, I don't see a preview of the jobs in Digitial Factory like in the local console, every user in the org needing to use/maintain/monitor the printer needs internet access (not standard by us because of security), need to create a bunch of new user accounts, just lots of extra work and in the end less functionality. As others have mentioned, we don't like our machines online for security reasons - the local network connection with browser based console was perfect and stable (unlike our experience with the connection to Digital Factory). I'll be trying to downgrade back to 7.1.3 which had all we needed.

[tomnagel 126]

Live camera feed over LAN is still there, right? Press the circled round blue button to access it while in the management console.

 

[rachael7 73]

2 minutes ago, tomnagel said:

Live camera feed over LAN is still there, right? Press the circled round blue button to access it while in the management console.

 

It is there on the local management console, but you cannot access the local management console once you put the machine on Digital Factory.

[tomnagel 126]

29 minutes ago, rachael7 said:

It is there on the local management console, but you cannot access the local management console once you put the machine on Digital Factory.

Connecting your printer to the cloud does NOT turn off access to the management console. 

Only if you turn on the firewall, the machine becomes unreachable via LAN. It will then only be accessible via the cloud.

 

[tomnagel 126]

By the way, Ultimaker has thought well about security. We understand it is a concern of IT departments, and in the past years we made large steps to address these concerns. We have very large companies as our customers, and these all set high security standards.

There is a lot of documentation on our support pages on the subject of security: https://support.makerbot.com/s/global-search/security

 

Maybe it is worthwhile having the discussion with your IT dept (again). Why? Because the cloud offering may add value to your business. Store your files (STL and 3MF) in the Digital Library. Share print files with colleagues. Browse through the print history of ALL your printers instead of on a single printer. etc etc

 

 

[rachael7 73]

22 minutes ago, tomnagel said:

Connecting your printer to the cloud does NOT turn off access to the management console. 

Only if you turn on the firewall, the machine becomes unreachable via LAN. It will then only be accessible via the cloud.

 

 

It most certainly did, the last time I tried it. Granted, that was many firmware version ago, so perhaps that changed, but it used to turn off the management console. You are able to confirm now though, that with firmware version 8.1, if I put the machine on Digital Factory, I can still access the management console via browser and use the iOS app from phone and tablet?

[Dadkitess 19]

No... Come on, this answer feels like "it will stay as is, sorry, your better contact your IT".

 

Damn, UltiMaker, you're... UltiMaker ! The brand that is chosen because of its reliability, its professionalism, because it's the one that, indeed, we already find in many companies. Don't know if it's the new "Capital M" in your brand that change  something, but you're not doing it right. UMS5 is not reliable enough and crippled by design flaw, UMS7 is a UMS5 mk2 which does not solve half of theses issues, and this new machine might advertise that they're won't be another one for a couple more years while the competition is running away with proper innovations.

 

And now, you... shift some functionalities to Cloud-Only processes ? Nah, come on, please, you're dealing with companies. Fix it, quick, your brand is already kinda damaged and I won't buy again from you. Many other might do as well.

[rachael7 73]

9 minutes ago, tomnagel said:

Maybe it is worthwhile having the discussion with your IT dept (again). Why? Because the cloud offering may add value to your business. Store your files (STL and 3MF) in the Digital Library. Share print files with colleagues. Browse through the print history of ALL your printers instead of on a single printer. etc etc

 

 

Yeah, that's not going to happen.  Our IP does not get stored on outside servers. We don't allow it for CAD/CAM software either. There are cloud versions of everything these days and we simply don't use any of them. Maybe big companies have big money to hire big lawyers to defend their IP or something; but us smaller operators have to rely on good data practices, like not randomly leaving our designs on the servers of the people who make our tools.

[rachael7 73]

3 minutes ago, Dadkitess said:

And now, you... shift some functionalities to Cloud-Only processes ? Nah, come on, please, you're dealing with companies. Fix it, quick, your brand is already kinda damaged and I won't buy again from you. Many other might do as well.

 

Hear, hear. This is certainly more than enough to move me off Ultimaker. The tech is already painfully behind machines that are a fraction of the price. This would seal it.

[tomnagel 126]

22 minutes ago, Dadkitess said:

this answer

I think you are not reading my answers (plural) in this thread well. I clearly said "we hear you" and "we're investigating what it means to bring back reprinting via management console soon". 

But I am also proud of the cloud functionality that we have realized over the past year. This direction was taken 3 years ago, and has nothing with the merger with Makerbot. Digital factory is a joy to use. Try it. 

 

 

 

[tomnagel 126]

32 minutes ago, rachael7 said:

It most certainly did, the last time I tried it. Granted, that was many firmware version ago, so perhaps that changed, but it used to turn off the management console. You are able to confirm now though, that with firmware version 8.1, if I put the machine on Digital Factory, I can still access the management console via browser and use the iOS app from phone and tablet?

Yes I can confirm that a printer that is connected to the cloud can have the firewall on or off. I am 99.9% sure that was always the case, because every printer that I work with is connected to DF, and I often access the printer locally via its IP address. That is not possible when the firewall is enabled.

I cannot comment on the iOS app, I am not sure whether that still works

Edited March 1, 2023 by tomnagel

[DDoove 3]

Hi all,

 

So I've just looked into the function of reprinting through the digital factory. I was aware of the library function, but now I understand that it is mandatory to upload the file to it to be able to reprint a part.

As most of our printing work is only printed once, the extra step of saving it to a library is rarely taken. Though it does happen sometimes that a part must be printed another time. This could be because of several reasons, but often because of the print failed halfway.

I've read through this thread and saw that the discussion has already been reopened. I just want to confirm that I too miss the function to reprint from history.

[tomnagel 126]

28 minutes ago, DDoove said:

I was aware of the library function, but now I understand that it is mandatory to upload the file to it to be able to reprint a part.

 

I think you misunderstood. If you print a file via Digital Factory, it can be reprinted later by checking your print history. This is automatic, you don't have to upload your part to the Digital Library.

 

[DDoove 3]

2 hours ago, tomnagel said:

 

I think you misunderstood. If you print a file via Digital Factory, it can be reprinted later by checking your print history. This is automatic, you don't have to upload your part to the Digital Library.

 

Then I probably don't understand how it works. I was assuming I had my printers connected through the cloud and so through the digital factory. I see my printers within the digital factory. But I don't see the option anywhere to reprint something from history. All I see is "Delete from history".

I've never seen the option within the digital factory actually. Always used it through the management console. I'll try to find out what you mean.

 

*Update* I found that I was not logged into my account in Cura, now I see the option to print through the cloud instead of over network. Thank you!

Edited March 1, 2023 by DDoove

[tomnagel 126]

Yes, in Cura you get a blue cloud icon near the name of your printer when you are connected to the cloud. (and if you connect over LAN, you see a blue checkmark)

The print button automatically changes to "Print via cloud" 

Edited March 1, 2023 by tomnagel

[satyshurp 4]

I realize I am probably a drop in the bucket, but I figure I would add my 2c here:

 

I run a small 3D printing lab at an aerospace company that uses Ultimakers. I switched to you guys specifically because your machines could provide all the functionality of our older Stratasys machines at a much lower cost. I found the grouping functionality of the printers very useful for presenting the printers as a single entity to our engineers so they don't have to manually choose which printer to send the job to. I realize this functionality probably exists in your cloud service, but that is not an option for us.

 

Many of our government contracts fall under ITAR or EAR and while we don't use these printers to print any real flight hardware, the line gets blurry enough that we are generally forbidden to use any sort of cloud software.

 

Please consider us folks that cannot use your cloud offerings when updating your printers.

[gr5 2,167]

I recommend downgrading your firmware.  Talk to your reseller and they can help you with this.  There are 2 ways to do it - one is to do it through the USB.  The other is to do the "recovery" method which requires removing the bottom of the printer.  Every version ever released is available but they are kind of hidden and you need to get the older versions from your reseller.

 

My S5 has a version quite a few years old.  It works just fine.  There are some minor bugs but there are different bugs in the newer versions.  More importantly, you don't want digital factory.  So get the version just before DF.   So get 7.X (instructions near the begining of this topic)

[rachael7 73]

Firmware downgrade from 8.1 requires the recovery method. The link to 7.1.3 and instructions are up-thread.

 

[jkcz 12]

3 hours ago, rachael7 said:

Firmware downgrade from 8.1 requires the recovery method. The link to 7.1.3 and instructions are up-thread.

 

I have the R1 model, no luck yet. Still waiting for Support to send me the instructions/files. Only the R2 files are available publicly it seems, because of some safety issues in the procedure.

[jkcz 12]

5 hours ago, jkcz said:

I have the R1 model, no luck yet. Still waiting for Support to send me the instructions/files. Only the R2 files are available publicly it seems, because of some safety issues in the procedure.

Got the recovery files and instructions now from Support, but I see v8.1.1 has just been released. No changelog yet, wonder if this magically re-enables all the old console functions?

 

Edit: changelog just released, no luck. Only bugfixes.

Edited March 2, 2023 by jkcz

[gr5 2,167]

Oops.  I was corrected.  There are version thresholds where you can't downgrade from because the upgrade process changed twice over the years.  So you would indeed need to do the "recovery procedure".  I've done it - it's not too bad.  Just make sure you don't touch anything under the printer when it is plugged in.

 

Or maybe it's because the internal data storage (database) format changes on some new versions and they know how to read the older version but it's impossible to have an older version read a newer database because when they wrote the older firmware they didn't know about the future data format.

 

Anyway, the recovery procedure always lets you downgrade.

[gr5 2,167]

What console functions went away?  I'm very curious about this but I'm not sure what you are talking about.

 

I think some browser features might still be there if you remember the page name such as x.x.x.x/temperature or something like that?  It might be that they just removed the link?

[gr5 2,167]

Okay I understand now.  "console" is one of the web pages right on the printer.  yeah I think you have to downgrade for those 😞