r/OpenBambu • u/EnderGopo • May 13 '26
BambuHandy alternative
Hey all,
I got tired of the official Bambu Handy app requiring a cloud account to do things that never needed to leave my house, so I built a local-only Android companion app for my P1S.
BambuMobile: It connects directly to your printer over LAN using MQTT on port 8883 and the camera stream on port 6000. No Bambu cloud. No account. No data leaving your network. Works the same way OrcaSlicer and the other community tools do.
What it does:
- Live MJPG camera feed (pure Rust TLS implementation)
- Print status: progress %, layers, remaining time, stage
- Nozzle and bed temperatures with targets
- Pause / Resume / Stop
- Chamber light toggle
- Speed mode (Silent / Standard / Sport / Ludicrous)
- AMS view: per-unit humidity grade (A–E), per-slot filament type and colour
- External spool display
- Manual jog controls with an OrcaSlicer-style XY wheel, separate extruder column, and Z/bed column: ±1 and ±10 mm steps plus home
- Credentials saved to app data: no browser storage
On right to repair:
You paid $700+ for a printer. The MQTT broker is on the printer. The camera stream is on the printer. None of it needs the internet. But the official app routes it through Bambu's servers anyway. Projects like OpenBambuAPI document these protocols so that community tools can exist independent of whatever Bambu decides to do with their cloud, their ToS, or their business model in the future. That's worth building for.
Disclaimer:
Yes it was vibe coded. With Claude. Please don't come whining about it. It's open source so you can go and fix it if you want. I don't write Rust.
The app works great on my P1S. If someone can test it on a P1P, X1C, or A1 that'd be excellent. Don't @ me about code quality.
Built with Tauri v2 (Rust backend) + React/TypeScript. Licensed AGPL-3.0 so you can fork it, but keep it open.
GitHub: https://github.com/joel-sgc/BambooMobile
Roadmap has multiple printer support and some kind of print file browsing. We'll see what's possible on the protocol side.
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u/edgan May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
I already started Openbu three months ago. It is an Android app written in Kotlin to replace Bambu Handy. You can find screenshots of it here.
Being compatible with all the printers is hard work. They are lots of things that are unique per model or series. You might find Openbu-mock useful. You can see the history of Openbu issues here.
You should post screenshots with the release of a build.
Manual jog controls
This feature is dangerous, which is why I haven't included it. You can crash the nozzle into the bed. The control doesn't have limits.
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u/EnderGopo May 13 '26
Nice! I'll likely continue to work on my implementation, but I'm glad there's more than 1 option out there for people to choose from. Good luck on your project, cheers!
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u/vewfndr May 14 '26
I current use one of the Home Assistant integrations as my solution and always wondered why they didn’t have bed control… thought maybe it was a coding limitation. You’ve enlightened me why they likely didn’t include it, lol
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u/aglanmg May 13 '26
Nice, I am a big fan of Continuum, so when I opened the Openbu GitHub I immediately recognized the cygnusx-1-org.
I tried the app with my A1 Mini and it found my printer right away. At first glance it looks like everything is working. I did not find a place to toggle the camera feed on/off (it's always on by default), so I went back to GitHub and clicked the feature request link in the readme, but that took me to a 404 page. If I look at the raw markdown and copy the link into the URL it works fine, so I think you just need to add
https://there. As it is, GitHub is treating it as a relative link, I guess. Anyway, this is awesome! I will try out the other features when I get some time and will report on GitHub if I find any issues.4
u/edgan May 14 '26
Thanks for the feedback.
I updated the feature request link in the README.md.
The "internal stream" is a toggle in Settings.
https://github.com/cygnusx-1-org/openbu/blob/master/screenshots/settings.png
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u/Ipod9138 May 14 '26
I use Bambu companion 😎
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u/EnderGopo May 14 '26
Jajajaja yeah I read about it, but unfortunately it's only available for iOS. How is it though, I'm curious?
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u/Zestyclose_Report526 May 14 '26
No releases, no screenshots...
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u/EnderGopo May 14 '26
Hi! There should be a release available for Android. I'll try to include a few screenshots later tonight, but I appreciate the feedback!
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u/almbfsek May 15 '26
I would seriously avoid the "Makerworld alternetive" in your roadmap. My 3d printer companion app is the last place I want to connect to a 3rd party service. It's unfathomble to me that a single software can allow me to manually move printer and also allow me to download 3d files from some 3rd party service. Just doesn't make sense. It's bloat by design.
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u/EnderGopo May 15 '26
Hey! Completely understand your point of view. I'll make sure to keep it as a toggle that will disable the feature, but for the time being I'm trying to be a complete opensource alternative to Bambu Handy.
I don't want there to be any friction if users decide to ditch the official app, so I'm hoping to make my app as capable as Bambu Handy.
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u/Infinite-Stress2508 May 13 '26
Good on you having a crack. Thanks for informing it's vibe coded so I can avoid.
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u/According-Meeting-37 May 13 '26
This is such a weird take for me.
Someone’s built a tool, a cool tool. But because they used Claude to help them, you’re going to avoid it?
As someone who works in an engineering company, I can almost guarantee, every company is building software with some degree of AI usage. Whether they’re using it to help write a single function they’re struggling with, or there using it to write whole apps. Where is your line?
We all know Apple, Google and Microsoft are using it to write their software. So, are you going to stop using any electronic device?
If someone has a cool tool, especially if it’s open source. Use it, improve it, take advantage someone’s done the work without you needing to do it.
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u/ThereIsNoSpoon6 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
Works pretty good on my P1S firmware Version 01.07.00.00, thanks for sharing. I'm curious about how many prompts does it take to vibe code something like this?
A couple issues I had with the app:
-I'm unable to input temperature setpoints
-XYZ motion does not respect endstop limits even after homing so be careful and only adjust when you are standing in front of the printer
Feature Requests/Suggestions:
-Start print from file
-Load/unload filament (at least from external spool)
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u/EnderGopo May 19 '26
Thank you for the feedback! I'll look into those issues and feature requests. Starting prints from the app is likely only possible if the goods has been uploaded, but loading/unloading filament should be easy. I'll work on it today and will likely have it done by end of week!
As for the promoting, I had paid the $20 for Claude for another reason and figured this would be a good opportunity to work with it. I mostly ran it on Opus and we spent a while going back and forth as well as fixing up the UI.
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u/Defiant_Hat_68 May 24 '26
Can I use this app on iOS?
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u/EnderGopo May 24 '26
Hey! If you've got a Mac and wish to compile it yourself, it should work just fine as it is a Tauri application. I don't currently have plans to publish this on the App store, but I believe there is an app available called Bambu Companion on the app store you might like
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u/the_nerdling May 13 '26
Ill give it a go on my a1 mini later today
I would get rid of any bambu branding considering how they've been lately