[3D Printing] How to Integrate Your Bambu Lab 3D Printer into Home Assistant

【3D Printing】How to Integrate Your Bambu Lab 3D Printer with Home Assistant
 

Want to connect your Bambu Lab printer to Home Assistant?
Here's everything you need to know about how to do it!
 

Given the ubiquity of 3D printers and smart home devices today, it's not uncommon to have them under the same roof.
Bambu Lab and Home Assistant have become household names for fast and reliable 3D printers and IoT or smart home control centers, respectively.
If you want to further streamline your 3D printing experience, getting the two to communicate and accessing your printer directly from Home Assistant is surprisingly straightforward.

Whether it's simply displaying information in a central location or executing a series of well-designed actions and integrations, the two make a perfect combination.
In this article, we'll cover what Bambu Lab printers and Home Assistant are, why you might want to connect them, and how to go about the process.
 

If you haven't heard, Bambu Lab makes super-fast and highly popular 3D printers for the modern market, including the top-of-the-line X1E, the fast and plug-and-play X1C, the compact and easy-to-use A1 and A1 Mini, and the more affordable but still capable P1S.
In recent years, these printers have become incredibly popular, a common sight in the homes of makers, tinkerers, and more.

Bambu's printers already include a wealth of network features and out-of-the-box connectivity, designed to be used within Bambu's cloud ecosystem, which also provides a good foundation for leveraging IoT platforms like Home Assistant.

Home Assistant is free, open-source IoT software that acts as a central hub for smart home devices on a local network.
This stands in stark contrast to the cloud-based, closed approach of many IoT and smart home systems, with Home Assistant typically running directly on small computers like the Raspberry Pi.
It allows for the management of various devices, such as cameras, speakers, lights, and of course, 3D printers!

Let's take a closer look at why connecting these two setups can be useful.
 

Why do it?
Connecting your Bambu printer to a Home Assistant setup means easy monitoring and control of the device from a central dashboard!
Through such an integration, you can monitor a wealth of data collected by the printer.
This includes fan speed, temperature, current print statistics, AMS information, live printer camera views, and much more!

Not only can you view data, but you can also command the printer to perform certain tasks.
You can pause, resume, or stop the current print, toggle any indicator lights (if equipped), and view printer diagnostic information... the examples are endless.

One of Home Assistant's most popular features is the ability to add automation between different devices.
For example, your printer can notify you that it needs more filament by changing the color of the room lights, or it can automatically start or stop printing based on readings from a smart humidity sensor—the possibilities are endless!



What do you need to do?
There are multiple ways to connect a Bambu Lab printer to Home Assistant, such as using MQTT/NodeRed.
This method connects the printer and the Home Assistant hub via a traditional MQTT connection on the local network.

However, in this article, we'll focus on Greg Hesp's ha-bambulab integration, as it is versatile and widely supported.
It allows for selective connection through Bambu's existing cloud ecosystem and has a simpler setup process while retaining easy access to a wealth of data and print integrations.

To connect your Bambu Lab 3D printer to Home Assistant via ha-bambulab integration, you will need:

1. A Bambu Lab 3D printer (connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Home Assistant setup).
2. Home Assistant

Keep in mind that depending on your printer model, the setup might vary slightly. For example, the P1 and A1 series require a local connection to use the live camera feed in Home Assistant (though you can also supplement with a cloud connection if you wish).
The X1 series printers also require an additional setting to be enabled (LAN Mode Live View) for the aforementioned functionality.

Install HACS
First, you need Home Assistant Community Store (HACS) to function properly.
You can find a guide on how to install HACS here.
In short, you install HACS to your Home Assistant hub, and from there you can easily access a plethora of custom integrations and elements created by the community for Home Assistant.

Install ha-bambulab
Once HACS is set up, you can install the actual integration! The simplified method is to access this link from any device on the same network as your Home Assistant installation.
This will automatically install the integration. However, if this doesn't work, you can try to do it manually:

1. Go to HACS in Home Assistant, click the three dots in the top right corner, and select the "Custom repositories" option.
2. Add the required custom repository in the "Integrations" category by entering "greghesp/ha-bambulab" in the "Repository" box and selecting "Integration" under "Category."
3. Once saved, you should see the integration at the top of the HACS main menu, aptly named "Bambu Lab"; download and install it. (If you don't see it, try searching for "Bambu Lab" in the search box near the top.)
4. While not required, it is recommended to restart Home Assistant at this point to ensure the integration can discover your printer in the next steps.

Add your printer
1. In Home Assistant's settings, access the "Devices & Services" section.
2. Click the "Add integration" button to search for and add the newly installed integration, which you can find again under the name "Bambu Lab."
3. As mentioned, you should now be able to choose between cloud and local connection. Select your preferred one.
If required, provide your Bambu Lab account login details.
If choosing a local connection (or also opting to use a cloud connection), you will need to provide the printer's IP address and access code.
The process of finding these is very similar to setting up Bambu Studio's LAN-Only mode.
 

Integrating a Bambu printer into Home Assistant is cool, but it's not very useful without a way to view information or interact with the printer.

Fortunately, you can easily create custom dashboards that look great and are powerful for displaying your printer's data!
Many users have already shared their dashboard setups from which you can draw inspiration, or you can create your own from scratch.
WolfwithSword allows you to generate your own custom YAML to create a sleek dashboard for your printer.

If you prefer automation, there are many possibilities in this section!
You can create different automations that trigger many possible events and command other devices in your Home Assistant network, such as changing the LED color around the printer based on its status.
Automations can be easily added to the integration configuration, located under "Devices & Services > Bambu Lab."

Now, your Home Assistant should be able to communicate with your Bambu Lab printer!
Use this cool setup to add more possibilities to your printing tasks!

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