It is there for a humidity temp sensor. We have held off on implementing for a few reasons:
1.) Time - There are so, so, so many feature requests that we have to take into account the most important and focus on those first.
2.) Concerns about docking - Once a user plugs in a port they will no longer be able to remove the PT from the magnetic base as it will be tethered. This is just something that a user will need to decide whether or not they are happy to give up portability to gain the extra insights into the chamber.
Hi looxonine. Understood. I noticed the docking issue myself, but for me it’s not much of a problem because I plan to leave it on my printer full time.
One thought - the Panda touch units are very reasonably priced, so it’s not too big a deal to just buy a 2nd unit if you also want remote monitoring. Can two of them be connected to the same printer at the same time? And would it be possible for a 2nd unit to get the 12C data from the first unit over wifi so it can also display the temp/humidity?
Why didn’t you use a multi-pin pogo connector that would have accounted for these extra data and power lines and transfer the jst connector to the dock. It may have added to the price but certainly not much.
Because hot swapping I2C could do all kinds of crazy things to the firmware. It is possible that we will get the hot swapping figured out in the future and then release another hardware version that supports this but for now, we figured that it was better to get a product to market that works and then expand on it later.
OK, I understand and your product is very well designed as it is already, thank you. I have only one printer so I wouldn’t mind much to lose the portability though :). Don’t know if that’s possible but could you design and sell an add-on in the way of a self-contained probes and MQTT transmitter and program Panda Touch to receibe both printer and probes data?
This is definitely something that we have on the roadmap. Something that is wireless and sits within the chamber and sends the data back to the touch over MQTT. There are a bunch of very cool things we can do but we need to be careful to take them on one at a time and not push to fast and then trip and fall.
This gets back to the idea of one PT communicating with a remote unit. I don’t have a print farm, but if I did, I would envision having a PT on each P1s as a dedicated front panel. Then, another PT could be used to remotely monitor/control the printers by connecting to the front-panel PTs instead of connecting directly to the printers. That would allow robust communications between the PTs and enable any kind of monitoring capabilities you’d want to build into the units.
Or what about a BTT Pi that sits as a central hub and acts as an in-between MQTT broker between all of the printers and panda touch units and enables a bunch of other cool functionality like decoding 3mf files and extracting thumbnails (too CPU and mem intense for the panda touch currently) and skip over objects… How about being able to connect a high res camera to the BTT Pi, mount it within the chamber and use it to stream to a service that you can access from an app wherever you are…
Lots of stuff in the oven mate but we just need to make sure that it is all stable and working well. Our goal is to offer to customers solutions that add genuine value and make the BBL products that much more appealing. We are crunching away every day and you’ll notice the fruits being released bit by bit.
