Android App for Monoprice Select Mini 3D Printer

Over the holidays I finally caved and bought myself a cheap 3D printer, a Monoprice MP Select Mini v2.

It’s obviously a lot smaller than some of its competitors for the same price like the Ender 3, but I needed it to fit in a small space and it packs surprisingly high performance software/hardware in it.

This little thing works great! The UI on the physical device looks fine and works well. It even has Wifi! However, I was disappointed to discover how primitive the native web UI was, and it failed to show some basic things like the target temperatures the extruder and bed were set to.

So after using the web UI for a few weeks I decided I needed to make something better looking (more like the local controller) and easier to use. I took a weekend to write up a simple Android app to accomplish this and add a few extra features that are supported by the device’s native web server but not available in that web UI.

MP Mini 3D Printer Client

 

Features

• UI theming similar to the local UI on the physical device
• View print status, including loading bar and percentage complete
• View current extruder/bed temperatures
• View and set extruder/bed target temperatures
• Cancel print button
• Automatic querying on app open to allow quickly checking on the status
• Automatic retrying connection a few times to account for occasional phone connectivity issues or printer server issues

Unfortunately I’ve had a limited time to continue development, but I hope to continue adding features:

• Uploading a file to print (as on web UI)
• Start/Pause print button (as on web UI)
• Allow selecting from and starting a print from files already on inserted SD card
• Adding guidance and tutorials to assist in troubleshooting or initially setting up printer’s Wifi connection
• Notifications on print completion

Notifications would be by far the most useful feature that isn’t natively available, but this adds an unfortunate amount of complexity to the app. This would involve either repetitively querying the print server when the app is in the background or keeping a web socket connection open in the background, both of which would result in higher battery consumption which is obviously not ideal. This also means being very careful about ensuring the user is aware of this high power usage and making sure the background querying starts and stops when requested and only when requested.

So that’s the goal! In the meantime, I hope this is useful to others in its current state.

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It’s been a while, here’s what I’ve been up to!

It’s been about a year since I last posted a project. A lot has happened over the past year. I’ve hardly had time to work on personal projects, and even less to do any major doucmentation of them. But I worked hard my last couple semesters and graduated college with the highest GPA I’ve ever had, I got myself a real job doing what I love, software development. With the new income, I’ve purchased a few awesome toys like a Pebble smartwatch, an Oculus Rift DK2. And most importantly I made my first real car purchase!

Quite an upgrade for me!

So along with this comes a whole bunch more project ideas!

What’s in progress and what’s to come:

• Ambient footwell lighting – Much like what is offered OEM and aftermarket for around $400, done for around $20.
  I have it almost all wired up, and a post about it is to come soon!
  
• Mounted Display for Media and Engine Diagnostics  – Using a Raspberry Pi, a 7″ LCD panel, and a USB OBDII connector. I have all the parts, and already laser cut a shell for the raw LCD panel and control board. Just need to do the GUI and OBD connection programming now.
  
• Dashcam – This is something I’ve been planning on doing for a long time. This is using a Raspberry Pi and camera. Most of the programming is already done (as one of my last projects in school).
• Head-Up Display – Inspired by this Lifehacker post, though I would not let it look nearly so ugly. This is a bit more of a dream, not sure how feasible it will be to do well without digging into my dashboard, but I love the idea ever since I got to try out a Camaro with one. It was way more useful than I ever gave the idea credit for.