if we could have the ability to show our power draw
and add our power costs per kwh the slicer could basically also tell us how much the real print costs besides the material are…
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How do you want to do that since the consumption depends on the environment (room temperature). Also, the printer can’t measure power consumption, so you’d have to use a smart plug to measure usage.
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?? what u mean the printer cant measure power consumption??? it knows what it should draw so it also should be able to display it righ?, pretty sure this is realizable an no big deal every pi can do this …also the consumption is depending on how much power the printer draws ! if a object get sliced it shows the time if u multiply this with ur power cost per kwh u got ur costs… i think…sure print times can change a lil bit compared to what it shows, but if it would be a lil bit off wouldnt be a big problem…
This needs hardware and software for that build in. Dont think the printers have that by default. My other printers in the past did not. So, simply use a smartplug
Explain to me how the printer should know what it should draw. The only thing you do know is the average power comsumption and the print time.
Other than that, it’s just variables that the printer doesn’t know about. Is the printer in a cold or hot room? Do you print with the door open or closed? In one case, the printer will consume more power than in the other. Do you work with dynamic rates or a fixed rate?
i dont know lol
doesnt it have some kind of cpu inside?? what is controlling the printer?
i mean it draws the power so it def knows what its pulling when printing…
since a pi can do this how should a pi know what its drawing? can u explain to me why the pi knows what its drawing?
yes the exact cost only can be calculated after the print but like i said if u add a price u could at least have the approximately costs…
I don’t think BBL printers run on Raspberry Pis.
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Question is: is that feature essentiel or a nice-to-have? I Count that to the nice-to-have. I dont need it for a working Printer.
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Esp32 in an P1S-series i think. X1 a better Board.
yes , totally agree… its no must but cool to have… there are few things cool to have lol
if it runs on a esp shouldnt it be possible then?
That’s just not how it works… the Pi can only calculate what the CPU is using for power. This does not scale up to the power consumption of a full printer.
If you must know the power consumption of the printer you’re best to use something like a Kill A Watt meter.
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It lacks the necessary hardware in the printer.
This not a feature worth adding to a printer. I’d rather Bambu applied the effort to more important features that actually improve prints.
If you want to know power consumption, connect your own meter. If you want to know the true cost of your prints, be sure to add the cost of the structure it sits in, the proportionate cost of internet, heating, cooling, and lighting, and your labor costs for printer setup, print preparation, filament acquisition, and all other consumables.
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only thing the printer “knows” is how much it CAN draw. it would have no way of calculating what you WILL draw, as that is dependent on a zillion variables. physics always wins.
the suggested kill-a-watt is the easiest “look back” solution. however, that will only give you a value for the print you just did, which is impacted by those zillion variables.
“can draw total”. not how “can draw for this print”.
Why doesn’t your car tell you how much gas you are going to use when you give it a random location you want to go to?
Because there’s so many variables to consider that making a guess is essentially useless. And a good chunk of those variables are out of the control of the device making the calculation.
If you really want to know the ‘true cost’ of a print - get a monitor, set it to record the highest power draw seen during the most torturous run, and then assume it will be at that level for the length of the print. Multiply that reading x time of the print x cost / kWh, and voila - you have a conservative estimate. There’s a ton of things you can do to refine that number, but that’s how most places do it.
I bought a Sonoff S31 smart plug which I flashed with the Tasmota firmware and have my X1C plugged into it. So I have local control of the power to the printer and the S31 (but not the Lite version) has power monitoring hardware as well. It also reports via the MQTT protocol so I can collect statistics elsewhere.
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That’s pretty awesome - a zigbee enabled smart plug for 14 bucks shipped from Amazon? Yes please!
Does the power quality measurement work? That’s a hell of a deal if it does.
edit : the wifi ones are even cheaper! Wow.
The S31 doesn’t have Zigbee just wifi. You have to choose models carefully if you want the Tasmota firmware which enables completely cloudless operation. I don’t know about the power quality measurement, not that fancy yet.
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