Is there a better enclosed AMS for the P1S than the Bambu? Is there a third party manufacturer making a superior model?
None that I am aware of.
The BL AMS uses a proprietary BUS cable to talk between the units.
I doubt they have licenced that to anyone, part of the lock-in.
But one could try tinkering with that cable and Creality’s CMS (their AMS version) , which according to many of its users seems to perform much better than Bambu’s AMS. If you do manage to find how to make Creality’s CMS work with a P1 or X1, do share it publicly; there will be plenty of people interested and willing to do the same.
It will be an electronics issue and determine the messaging model they send along the bus.
I can’t imagine they left out encryption on this process.
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There are several aftermarket modifications/upgrades available for the AMS
Python being the latest and greatest.
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I don’t count these as aftermarket as they require cannibalisation of an existing AMS or an expensive list of parts and it isn’t produced by a third-party.
It is a modified existing AMS, it clearly has benefits, but, it isn’t a product of a different team with very different ideas.
A true third-party could be bought of the shelf, doesn’t require assembly and provides out of the box improvements.
I think there wasn’t encryption. Microcontroller to microcontroller commnunication usually done in byte data and as short as possible since microcontroller isn’t as powerful as your phone or your PC. Definitely not in ascii readable text.
The reverse engineering of communication of bambu lab AMS is possible. It can be done by sniffing the data-line quite easy. But making head or tail out of bunch of byte strings is a whole different story. Just too much work, very little reward.
I don’t think anyone wants to go down this rabbit hole to design electronics that can talk to the printer like the AMS does.
The name Python Bambu AMS upgrade is quite misleading for me. Python is well known as programming language. You can program arduino board with Python you know. At the first glance, I thought the electronics of this upgrade is some kind of arduino board running Python. But as you all know, it is just different shell, but the gut is still the same
I know, I used to do this stuff.
I imagine there is encryption though based solely on two factors, the AMS has a microcontroller and they will not open up the RFID spool tags, this indicates a wish to remain proprietary.
They also were not happy when the X series firmware community project started and only pretended to be happy when they received public backlash.
Modern bus speeds are significantly faster than they ever used to be and thinking multiple kilo bytes per message isn’t out of the norm as it transmits in milliseconds.
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Very true… and it proves that unless somehow "kept in check " ( through users/public pressure/backlash) Bambu will continue to try keeping the lid on its software/firmware in order to hold-on on their much beloved Apple business model.
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I don’t think it would be easy but with the right tools someone should be able to reverse engineer it I hope. It would be really cool to build a custom AMS with 5 slots stacked 2 levels high in the same AMS.
Custom builts could have other advantages like supporting the 2kg reels.