What’s the chance of devising an interface device to talk to a UPS? The UPS signalling to the printer that utility power is lost and the printer going to a low-power state would be handy.
Sure, you could write that, but it would require LAN mode (or a hack).
What about USB? Most of the consumer-grade ones use that interface.
Yeah the printer doesn’t have enough ports for that and that would still require software integration on the part of the printer, the printer already have power loss recovery built in and even in a low power state would still have to keep the bed fully heated so it would still draw significant power
These days I would take a look at some of the modern lifepo power stations (EcoFlow, Bluetti, Anker etc). . They’re often not that much more expensive but are way more flexible to use and have much more energy so they could run quite a few printers for a much longer period of time than a “classic” UPS that often comes with quite small and old battery tech. Then you wouldn’t really have to be concerned about shutting a print job down, because they much likely last way longer than an average power blackout.
Not all, but many have quite short switching times these days and they can easily be combined with PV if wanted.
Keep in mind that a UPS isnt really going to last that long and it only really benefits you if it’s a short outage. They help more with sags/spikes and outages lasting less than 15 minutes max. Power stations may last a little longer but they still have limits. Factor in the cost of the outage in lost filament time versus the power supply cost too, most times unless you’re running a large operation it’s not worth it. If you are running a large operation consider a backup supply that is meant to run long term. I’ve had PLA prints recover after a power outage with nothing more than the cooling line you would expect to see at the pause similar to filament running out and being changed.
Servers/Networking/Datacenters use them to keep the equipment/room going long enough for the generator or other alternate power supply to spin up. Usually less than a minute.
1 Like
Yes, you need a USB listener on one side to get events from the UPS, then you need network connection to the printer. Unfortunately unless you are in LAN mode or you spoof the ID, you can’t send the “pause” command over MQTT, that’s what I meant by “or a hack”.
But I should have thought about a little more, I think it might possible to inject a command over bambu bus as well. In that case you’d could use the timelapse module as a bridge (instead of MQTT).
Ultimately I - speaking as a user of an appliance rather than the tinkerer type - don’t much care how it’s accomplished, I just want the printer to finish the layer and pause in a graceful way until power comes back on.