⚠️ What we can and can't do

BolloPrint reads your printers and records what they print. It doesn't control them, it doesn't send them work and it doesn't watch them on video.

This page sets out, plainly, what we give you today with each connection type and what we don't. It's here so you know what you can count on before you build your way of working on top of it.

If you're looking for your specific model, go to Compatible printers. If you're looking for how each type connects, go to Connection types.

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What we don't do with any printer

We don't send jobs to print. The file is sent from your slicer, as always. We read what's happening and note it down. There's no print queue and no "print from BolloPrint".

We don't send files to your printers. Your slicer is still what sends the job to the machine. If you decide to attach a sliced file to a piece, we read it to get its weight and print time, and nothing else.

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

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

We don't touch anything on your printer. We don't delete files, change settings or update firmware.

We don't calculate the real cost of a print. The cost you see on your pieces is the one you configure. Cross-checking it against what the machine really used is something else, and we don't do it yet.

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What we give you today, depending on how it's connected

The same machine can offer different things depending on the route we reach it by. This is the honest table:

Connection	Live status	Job thumbnail	Camera	Pause · Resume · Cancel	Material used
Bambu — through the cloud	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅ grams of each material
Bambu — over the local network	✅	❌	✅	❌	⚠️ only which materials, no grams
Klipper (QIDI, Sovol, Voron, RatRig, Snapmaker U1, Creality K1…)	✅	✅	✅ if you have a webcam in Klipper	✅	⚠️ only the job total
PrusaLink (Prusa MK4, MK3.5, MK3.9, MINI, XL, CORE One)	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅ grams per extruder
SDCP (Elegoo resin and ChituBox boards)	✅	❌	✅ on the models that have one	✅	❌
Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 (local MQTT)	✅	❌	✅	❌	❌
FlashForge (Adventurer 5M, 5M Pro, AD5X, Creator 5)	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅ grams per extruder

The thumbnail is the image your slicer made of the piece: what should come out. The camera is what is coming out. They're two different things and one doesn't replace the other.

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Why the missing ones are missing

Commands (pause, resume, cancel)

Bambu doesn't accept them from anyone who isn't Bambu. Its recent 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, no warning, with the telemetry flowing as if all were well. That's why its buttons are greyed out, with a padlock and "Read-only": we'd rather not give you one the machine will silently ignore.

On the Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 and on FlashForge they haven't been built yet. Their protocols do support them; it's pending work on our side, not something the machine prevents.

On Klipper, PrusaLink and SDCP they work today, on two conditions: the printer must be connected through the local agent and the link must be alive at that moment. If the agent can't reach it, the buttons stay greyed out with the reason rather than accepting a command that won't arrive.

⚠️ And a warning that applies to all of them: the command is sent, not confirmed. None of these protocols replies "done". What confirms the printer did as you asked is seeing it change status on the next reading.

The job thumbnail

It arrives when the printer can give it to us over the route we already have open. Where it's missing, this is why:

• Bambu over the local network — the thumbnail doesn't travel over the data connection. It's inside the sliced file, on the printer's card, and getting it out means opening a second file channel, with the card inserted and developer mode on. It's being looked into.
• SDCP and Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2 — pending work on our side.

The camera

• Bambu through the cloud — its cloud doesn't serve the camera to third parties. Over the local network we do have it.
• PrusaLink — Prusa's camera is 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. It's planned and not available yet.

Material used

Each family answers a different question, and we never split a total between materials: dividing a total would give a per-material number that looks measured but is made up, and that's worse than leaving it blank.

• Grams of each material: Bambu through the cloud, PrusaLink and FlashForge.
• Only a job total: Klipper.
• Only which materials went in, with no quantity: Bambu over the local network.
• Nothing: SDCP and Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2.

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What your printer has to provide

These aren't our limitations, but they affect you all the same:

Bambu Lab

• LAN Mode must be enabled to connect over the local network. That's what makes the machine show its access code.
• ⚠️ The access code changes every time you enable or disable LAN Mode or Developer mode. If it suddenly stopped connecting, this is almost always why.
• The X1 series needs a microSD card inserted to print in LAN mode.
• The A1 and P1 machines allow very few connections at a time. With the phone app or the slicer open, the printer accepts our connection and then sends nothing: you'll see it as "connected but not sending data". Close the others.

Klipper

• We need to reach Moonraker (the web interface: Mainsail or Fluidd) from the network where the agent runs.
• If Klipper runs on an ordinary PC with no serial number of its own, we use the physical address of its network card (the MAC) to recognize it. We could only not register it if it didn't have that address either.

Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2

• ⚠️ 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.

Elegoo resin machines and ChituBox boards (SDCP)

• They ask for no password at all. Worth knowing: anyone on your network can read that printer, not just us.

FlashForge

• You have to enable LAN Only on the machine and use the check code on its screen.

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Two things you can count on

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.

Every active printer takes up a slot in your plan, whichever route it comes in by. The same machine reached through the cloud and over the local network takes up one, not two.

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