Request to add support for Captive Portals or guest/login networks

I just bought an X1C, and I live in housing that uses captive portal networks. (I think that’s what it’s called). My workplace and college also use these networks.

The type of Wi-Fi network that many hotels, workplaces, colleges, airports, and other public places use is known as a captive portal or guest network. These networks are open networks that do not require a password to connect, but when you try to access the internet, you are redirected to a web page that requires you to enter a username and password, agree to terms and conditions, or complete some other form of authentication.

You should be able to bypass this issue by just connecting to the network, then using the printer’s IP address on an already connected device and going from there. For some reason, this doesn’t seem to work with the X1C. Both my housing and workplace use networks like this, so there is no way to use the X1C’s network functionality, which has many features since everything is cloud-based.

I’ve looked at a lot of posts, and so far, there are no solutions for this beyond using a hotspot. Maybe Im missing something.

I would like to see a firmware update that adds the ability to access the webpage and log in with credentials to my network. This is a big issue for anyone using this type of printer in a work environment with this type of wifi.

Normally I could just modify my printer firmware myself but not here.
If anyone has a workaround or if Bambu Lab could integrate this feature, it would be much appreciated. Otherwise i really cant use this printer in the way i wanted. I have cheaper printers that didn’t have this issue.

1 Like

Most captive portals do not match only IPs, but also match mac addresses of the devices connected. And the mac address from your printer will differ from that of the other device you have used to bypass the captive portal.
The only way to solve this would be to have a router/hotspot connecting to the the wifi network and using that to bridge the connection of the printer to the wifi. Or talk to the provider of the wifi, they can usually add mac addresses to a whitelist if they feel generous.

1 Like

Thanks for the reply I didn’t know that about the mac address. I’ve actually tried both options. At least in my housing additional routers are not allowed. As for the provider, there’s no help there.

Maybe it’s possible to use a mobile router / access point to connect the printer to a 4G/5G network. So you don’t need to use the local wifi.