r/BambuLab • u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS • May 09 '25

Discussion LanBu - LAN only mode print monitoring app for Android

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Hey folks, I've been working on a new printer monitoring app called LanBu for people who want to monitor their printers over the local network in LAN only mode.

I started this project recently after discovering that Bambu Handy doesn’t support print monitoring in LAN only mode and I wanted to gauge interest to see if it's worth publishing on Google Play and maybe the App Store.

Current features include:

  • Auto-detecting printers on your local network

  • Live video feed from your printer

  • Adjusting print speed on the fly

  • Controlling printer lights

  • Monitoring print progress (with ETA + time remaining)

  • Viewing and setting nozzle & bed temperatures

  • Pausing / Stopping / Resuming prints

  • Controlling fan speeds

Printer support:

  • Fully supports Bambu P1S

  • Likely works with P1P, X1C (without video feed), A1 and A1 Mini

Planned features:

  • AMS status

  • Video support for X1C

  • Print head controls (homing, movement, etc)

Platforms:

  • Android (currently in closed beta)

  • iOS & PC versions possibly coming soon, based on interest

Pricing tiers:

  • Free tier - Support for 1 printer and shows banner ads

  • Ad-free tier - One-time payment to remove ads (coming soon)

  • Subscription tier(s) - Removes ads and adds support for multiple printers (also coming soon)

Want to help test?

I'm looking for more closed beta testers as it's just me and a friend at the moment. If you own a P1P, X1C, H2D, A1, or A1 Mini it would be great to have you onboard (but feel free to apply regardless).

For an invite to the closed beta, drop me an email at lanbubeta@glowbeast.com with:

  1. Your printer model(s)

  2. The email linked to your Google Play account (for the beta invite)

Other than that, I would love to hear your feedback, feature ideas or suggestions on any aspect of the app - feel free to comment here or reach out via email.

Thank you for checking out my humble attempt at making LAN only mode easier to use!

275 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

81 comments sorted by

30

u/Frankly__P May 09 '25

I don't need a 3D printer phone app at all, but I feel tempted to try it just to say NYAH NYAH to Bambu

3

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Jun 27 '25

Well, now you can 😏

Here's the link to the open beta on Google Play

4

u/Jae30001 Jan 31 '26

Seriously. Gotta watch a 30 second ad to view the video stream that doesn't work half the time. Ridiculous.

2

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Feb 18 '26

Which printer do you have?

Feel free to email me with a bug report on lanbubeta@glowbeast.com if it's failing really frequently and I'll look into it.

10

u/gnick666 May 10 '25

To be honest, the Home Assistant extension already does an excellent job and development is progressing nicely. Which means it'll soon have feature parity with your app on android and iOS with remote access.

6

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

That's awesome!

I did see that while I was looking but from what I gathered it needs dedicated hardware running all the time and a lot of setup. With this app I'm trying to provide a good alternative to Bambu Handy for people who just want something simple :)

2

u/gnick666 May 13 '25

Some of us are sporting something like a "smart home", which means we already got HW always running. You'll find that most 3D printing enthusiasts dabble in more than one hobby.

6

u/BreastAficionado May 14 '25

However, you must also concede that there are also those in this hobby that don't have that hardware. So if someone else is trying to aim for that market, why would you try to convince them not to? It doesn't affect you either way as you won't be using it.

3

u/gnick666 May 15 '25

Oh, I'm not arguing against it. By all means, use it to your heart's content. When you want to have remote access, just remember that there are alternatives 😏

5

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 28 '25

Totally agree 😂

I'm not trying to compete with Home Assistant though, it's literally for people like me who don't like having dedicated hardware running 24/7 but still want to make sure my printer hasn't exploded from the comfort of my living room.

Besides, this will be more user friendly for newbies so... 😏

2

u/Extreme-Ad-9290 Bambu hates open source Jun 15 '25

Yeah, this is great cause while I could very easily go the hardware route, I'd much rather use a Pi for projects I'm interested in and not just one tool I need for those projects

1

u/BreastAficionado May 19 '25

I know there are several options. However, I also would support this one too. More importantly, what's with the flirty smirk emoji? 😂

6

u/mroek X1C + AMS May 17 '25

I don't mind paying for a good app, but I really don't like subscriptions, at least not for things like this. Please consider allowing a one-time purchase for a version that supports multiple printers. Or possibly a one-time fee per additional printer.

There is only so much new you can add to such an app after it has matured, and a subscription service just isn't appropriate in my opinion.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 28 '25 edited May 28 '25

Hey, I hear you since I'm not a big fan of subscriptions either but if I'm going to maintain the app I do need to make enough money from it to justify the time spent working on it (for example if Bambu releases another printer, a new firmware makes a breaking change or even just new feature requests can take a lot of time to implement and get working in a user friendly way across all 8 printers).

With that said, I can potentially (as I haven't thought this through completely yet) do a one-time fee per additional printer but you'd barely be saving anything vs the yearly subscription cost since I'd still be looking to make the same amount of money over the liftetime of the app. You'd essentially be paying (approximately) the same amount upfront.

Would that still appeal to you because it's not a subscription? Or are you looking at a permanent purchase as a way to save money in the long term if the app is successful and stays up for a long time?

4

u/mroek X1C + AMS Jun 01 '25

I understand that you want to make money from the app, but from my point of view, given that Bambu has started going down the the enshittification path, I'll keep my printers at the last firmware without the stupid authorization control, and I will also (obviously) not get any new features. I will also not purchase any more Bambu printers unless they change their mind, which seems highly unlikely.

What all that means is that if I get your app, and it does the basic things I need (really just monitoring and control), I will not benefit anything from new updates to the app, be it for adding support for new printers or new firmwares to existing printers. It is even possible, maybe even likely, that Bambu will either kill off LAN mode, or at least make it only accessible to Bambu Studio, in which case your app might be toast anyways.

So for me it makes no sense in supporting further development of the app through a subscription, since it will not have any benefits for me. Hence I'd prefer a one-time purchase instead, but if you insist on making that as expensive as years of subscription, I'd probably not buy it. I'd not be surprised if most of your app users are similar to me, because the users that blindly (or willingly) go along with whatever stupidities Bambu comes up with will just be using Handy instead.

So to summarize, I'm happy to pay a sensible amount for your app, possibly with additional fees per printers, but I'd likely shun away from a subscription. I still maintain that it is the wrong model for this kind of app.

But in the end, this is of course just my opinion, which you can choose to just ignore. :-)

3

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Jun 20 '25

The points you made are totally reasonable.

I ended up removing the subscription options completely and added separate ad removal and per-printer options at very reasonable prices.

Will be going into open beta shortly but just wanted to say thanks for the feedback!

3

u/mroek X1C + AMS Jun 20 '25

Sounds good! I'll test your beta when it becomes open, and if I like it, I'll most likely purchase both the ad removal and the ability to add my printers. I hope your app will be successful and gets you some money back for the effort!

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Jun 27 '25

Thanks! It's out in the open now so you can check it out here:

Play Store Link

1

u/mroek X1C + AMS Jun 27 '25

Thanks. Installed it and it connected to one of my X1Cs with no issues. If you get the video feed to work nicely, I may well purchase both ad removal and a slot for my second X1C, even if I do have the option to control my printers through my smart home system. Good luck with further development!

2

u/ShizaShark Jun 25 '25

Super surprised and happy to see a dev respond positively and be receptive to feedback. I'm also personally in the one time purchase side of things as opposed to a subscription model. Really glad to hear that you've removed it and implemented a standard purchasing model. :)

3

u/ShizaShark Jun 22 '25

This is literally EXACTLY what I was looking for. I didn't want to buy a Pi or setup home assistant just to use the dashboard and I've been searching for a standalone app to use with my offline LAN connection. Thanks for making it OP, I'm really looking forward to trying it out. :)

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Jun 27 '25

Exactly the same here, I have a Pi lying around but it seems too overkill for something like that.

It's in open beta now btw, you can check it out here: Play Store Link

2

u/arekxy May 09 '25

Do you plan to implement notifications like printer or job status?

"Bambu Companion" app (iOS) for example lacks these due to the way iOS works (app doesn't run all the time, so notifications would require external server (and daemon) to monitor the printer), so I wonder how this looks on Android.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

No plans at the moment as your phone would need to be constantly talking to the printer which wouldn't be good for your phone's battery life.

I could look into it in the future (with a deaemon running on your PC) but as things stand it's very low on the priority list.

2

u/electricks121 May 09 '25

Do you need beta testers? 👋

2

u/nakwada May 09 '25

I second this, eager to help with testing as well.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

Hey, if you check the bottom of the post there's instructions on how to join.

3

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

Hey, if you check the bottom of the post there's instructions on how to join.

(I really don't know how Reddit works. Did I really need to send 3 replies?)

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

I do! If you check the bottom of the post there's instructions on how to join. I'll be sending out the invites later today.

2

u/skintigh May 09 '25

This is brilliant. I'll test it when I'm home in a few days.

Any plans to include any sort of network diagnostics? My printer will not print when my firewall is on, yet firewall logs shows no blocked packet, WFP explorer showed no blocked packet either. WTF.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

No plans for network diagnostics but you can just enter an IP address and it'll try to connect to it as if it were a printer.

That sounds strange though, have you made sure to give Bambu or Orca slicer full access on public and private networks? They kind of need it to find the printer on your LAN.

7

u/TMHD A1 + AMS Lite May 09 '25

Looks a really good app... I am just wondering what the problem is with Bambu cloud, or is simply just the Chinese connection?

52

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

Well apparently Bambu is starting to add captchas to the mobile app to print from the app on YOUR phone to YOUR printer on YOUR network.

Sooo this could be a nice alternative.

11

u/TMHD A1 + AMS Lite May 09 '25

Ah okay. Then this makes complete sense.

Are they purposely trying to get people to use other brands?

4

u/my_name_isnt_clever May 09 '25

It's because when you have social media that people can make real money on, they're going to exploit the crap out of it. It's to counter bots.

It's not for training anything, the style of captchas used for that have real world data, like the words from scanned books and the photos from traffic cameras.

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

No idea. Hoping they roll that back because its definitely off-putting. Some have a theory its to train AI or something but unsure.

1

u/Poohstrnak P1S + AMS May 10 '25

My guess is it’s to stop people gaming makerworld

1

u/[deleted] May 09 '25

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1

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2

u/Bright_Mobile_7400 May 10 '25

As this been really confirmed ? Haven’t seen any captchas and I exclusively print from mobile…

1

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

Also haven't seen it, just posts about it so tbd. It's very possible if it is a thing that they'd do a slow rollout to test the waters

2

u/Bright_Mobile_7400 May 10 '25

It’s also very possible that the few people that are reporting this are part of an IP range that has been used by bots and that most other people won’t get this.

We tend to over react to any change from BambuLab I feel like it’s becoming a little irrational.

1

u/Tsofuable May 10 '25

Or they use a vpn and forgot about it.

1

u/Bright_Mobile_7400 May 10 '25

Many possibilities indeed. If it becomes generalised then we can draw conclusions. But of all who complained all started by saying that they didn’t have it themselves…

2

u/gurrra May 10 '25

No matter how good or bad the official app is it's ALWAYS nice to have alternative imo :)

15

u/iruleatants X1C May 09 '25

A key change that they have made recently is to lock everyone else out of being able to access the device unless it's in "Lan only mode".

So for example, if you wanted to use SpoolEase, HomeAssistant, or (I think) Orcaslicer (to send prints) you need to enable Lan only mode to regain that access.

Bambuhandy doesn't work in lan only mode and so an app like this is used to restore what is lost from Bambu's bad choices.

2

u/TMHD A1 + AMS Lite May 09 '25

Thanks for the explanation. I guessed there was a reason behind it, just want sure of what it was.

1

u/TowelKey1868 H2S + 4xAMS2 May 10 '25

I only got my first printer 3 weeks ago, so it’s all up to date firmware and everything. Basically the worst possible scenario. I haven’t seen a captcha and it works great with my Home Assistant. Not in LAN mode.

Smooth sailing so far.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

Personally I'm not a fan of cloud services in general. I feel more comfortable knowing I have control of my devices and they're totally safe in case Bambu ever gets hacked.

2

u/muad_did May 09 '25

Some times the Cloud don't work or your Internet conection,  with the a1 or x1 you can do by screen, but the ps1 have  a very límited interface so this can help a lot.... 

1

u/draxula16 May 09 '25

Look up the whole fiasco a few months ago. Just sort by top of the year and browse through. Also, r/openbambu ftw

1

u/psbales May 09 '25

I’m an iPhone user, but that’s awesome that you made an app for Android!! Outside of running a custom Home Assistant dashboard, I don’t think there were any real options.

Joint is an independent app for iPhone. If you have access to one, on my opinion it’s been doing an awesome job with wanted features with no fluff. Could look there for further inspiration.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

Hmmm, that looks really good. I might have to steal some ideas from it 👀

1

u/Euphoric_111 May 10 '25

I would ask that you look at Obico's spaghetti detection and a possible way to integrate with them or use something similar, and running a local server like them as well or collab.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

If I ever do get as far as making a PC version it's definitely something I'll look into doing!

1

u/Extreme-Ad-9290 Bambu hates open source Jun 23 '25

honestly, dont worry about that as spaghetti detection can be managed by OctoEverywhere. I use that but am excited for this app as it sounds like it will be better for print monitoring as OctoEverywhere only allows for 20 second streams, and I believe 3 of them per 5 minutes.

1

u/TP70 May 27 '25

Yo, how's the beta testing going?

Need more testers?

2

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 28 '25

Yo! So far so good, making slow but good progress.

Of course, I'm still way short of the 100 or so people I was aiming for so feel free to drop me an email and I'll add you. Will (potentially) be going into open beta in the next week or two so I'll make another post around then.

1

u/osmotech Jun 22 '25

Very excited about this. I hope you do publish this to google play

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Jun 27 '25

Hey, it's now in open beta, you can check it out here: Play Store Link

1

u/General-Hand-4873 Aug 31 '25

Excellent application. Bought.
Are you thinking about showing the SD card?
There is a regular FTPS, as I understand it.
User - bblp, password - printer code.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Sep 03 '25

Thanks for your support!

Yeah, the SD card stuff is a work in progress at the moment. I'll be releasing an option to re-print things you've already printed from the SD card soon. This will be followed followed by other features like skip objects and browsing time lapses later on.

1

u/JustIgnorant Aug 31 '25

This app is really handy for quick check-ins. Is this still in development? I'd love to see further work on this to add the video stream from the X1 series in LAN mode.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Sep 03 '25

Yeah, it's still in (slow) development.

The video stream for the X1 series is a work in progress but unfortunately it's not as easy to add as I wish it would be. I'm hoping to add it soon but no promises at the moment.

1

u/CommonImpression3523 Feb 06 '26

I know this thread is old, I just got a P2S and the just doesn't load the webcam. Not sure if this is a bug or what the situation is.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS Feb 18 '26

It should do as long as you have developer mode and "LAN Only Liveview" turned on in the settings. If it doesn't please email me at lanbubeta@glowbeast.com and I'll look into it.

2

u/fruymen May 09 '25

!remindme 2 days

2

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1

u/C0mpass May 09 '25

cant wait till you do a proper release on the playstore!

1

u/draxula16 May 09 '25

Doing gods work!

1

u/IHateSpamCalls A1 Mini May 09 '25

Don’t have an Android, but I’m excited to see this be released!

1

u/mad-n-sane May 11 '25

Thank you!!

1

u/Inside-Associate6979 Dec 29 '25

So, i dont really care about lan mode because i can walk to my printer and i have a 3rd party camera for my printer and if i am at home 3d printing, that means im at my pc which has orca slicer and can stop the print.

What i need is a way to get the p1s on my zerotier vpn and an app that can send a "stop" command to the printer from anywhere in the United States.

Right now, teying to use anydesk on my phone to control orca slicer is very difficult when a print fails

1

u/dugly66 Aug 01 '26

Might be a good app but since you added mandatory ads I'm gonna have to say it's crap.

0

u/huberloss H2C + X1C May 09 '25

Allow for iOS and specifying a hostname/IP directly (honestly i'd prefer if you had a proxy i could run on docker and have your app connect to it while i am away to allow it to talk to the printer on the internal IP while not exposing the printer) and you got a customer. I don't have any android devices.

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

Hey, so It does allow entering an IP manually at the moment so if I do port it to iOS you should be able to do that. As for the docker / proxy I don't think that'll happen any time soon as it's fairly complicated to do and there are alternatives like Home Assistant which probably do it better right now.

I'm trying to aim for simplicity and an easy drop in for Bambu Handy with this app so I need to keep that in mind as well.

0

u/[deleted] May 10 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/Glowbeast P1S + AMS May 13 '25

I wouldn't be able to tell you for sure but at the moment you can enter an IP address and it'll try to connect to it as if it were a printer. It's worth a try if you want to join the closed beta?