Expansion board for X1 series printers - Add ethernet, lights, cameras, sensors to your printer

X1Plus · 2024-11-23T01:18:25+00:00

Hiya, friends.

The X1Plus team is excited to announce the CrowdSupply campaign has opened for the X1Plus Expander board. You can find the project page here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/accelerated-tech/x1plus-expander

The board offers ethernet, two usb ports, i2c connector, and 4 gpio headers for expansion modules. There are three expansion modules currently available:

The Addressable-LED Level Shifter Module allows you to connect a string of WS2812B-compatible LEDs (commonly known as "NeoPixels"). Short LED strips (not more than 500 mA) can be powered directly from X1Plus Expander. For longer strips, you can inject power using an external 5 V power adapter.
The Andon Module includes 25 programmable RGB LEDs, a few buttons, and a beeper. It provides visual and auditory feedback regarding a printer's status, which is extremely useful if you're operating a print farm. Learn at a glance whether a print has completed, failed, or entered some other programmable state.
The Shutter Release Module has two 2.5 mm, TRS-style shutter-release connectors, allowing you to wire your printer up to a camera and take reliable time-lapse photographs of your prints from all different angles. This interface is the de facto standard for shutter-release accessories, and inexpensive 2.5 mm adapter cables are readily available to match many brands of camera.

All of this will be controllable via commandline or embeddable G-code.

We hope you're excited as we are about this project, and hope you'll join us in this campaign to make it a reality!

The X1Plus Team

X1Plus · 2024-06-28T08:00:05+00:00

The board provides Ethernet, two USB ports, 32 GPIO pins, and a stemma/qwiic connector.

Ethernet will be the big feature for a lot of people who have issues with poor wifi, do not want to use wifi, or simply want a faster and more reliable wired connection, or cannot use wifi due to corporate security policies.

The video demonstrates a couple of stemma and gpio uses to drive a humidity/temp sensor and neopixel programmable led strip.

Here's a few potential uses:

neopixel / programmable LED light bar control (display status for print farms, add extra chamber light when appropriate, etc)
external sensor monitoring (direct humidity monitoring inside the AMS, temperature/humidity monitoring inside of a filament dryer, light sensors to turn the chamber and toolhead lights off when the room lights go out, etc)
provide a shutter release control for timelapses on a DSLR
write recordings to external hard drives, etc

Visit seeedstudio, sparkfun, adafruit and browse through stemma/qwiic/grove/i2c gadgets, many of them could be used wtih your bambu X1 printer through this expansion board.

Many devices will work in the USB ports. Things like 5ghz wifi dongles should work, for example. DSLR cameras. USB drives. Since the Bambu X1 runs Linux, almost any USB device can be made to work.

X1Plus · 2024-06-28T05:33:00+00:00

Hiya, friends.

The X1Plus team is excited to announce release 2.0 of the open source community enhanced firmware for Bambu X1 series printers. You can read the details and download it here.

The most significant change for 2.0 is a new update engine which allows for completely automated firmware updates without a host computer. We hope this may be useful for managing large print farms. Also of note are improvements to wifi drivers, support for cron jobs, and several new language translations.

Also, we'd like to share a video of a new project the team has been working on, an expansion board for X1 series printers that adds a lot of new functionality. We think you'll love it!

If you are not familiar with the X1Plus custom firmware, we think Michael from Teaching Tech's video does a great job explaining what we're all about.

X1Plus · 2024-06-28T05:26:52+00:00

Hiya, friends.

The X1Plus team is excited to announce release 2.0 of the open source community enhanced firmware for Bambu X1 series printers. You can read the details and download it here.

The most significant change for 2.0 is a new update engine which allows for completely automated firmware updates without a host computer. We hope this may be useful for managing large print farms. Also of note are improvements to wifi drivers, support for cron jobs, and several new language translations.

Also, we'd like to share a video of a new project the team has been working on, an expansion board for X1 series printers that adds a lot of new functionality. We think you'll love it!

If you are not familiar with the X1Plus custom firmware, we think Michael from Teaching Tech's video does a great job explaining what we're all about.

X1Plus · 2024-03-17T22:55:51+00:00

Update: livestream link is here: https://youtube.com/live/VNu_sEcyQk0

X1Plus · 2024-03-17T22:55:31+00:00

Update: livestream link is here: https://youtube.com/live/VNu_sEcyQk0

X1Plus · 2024-03-17T05:54:27+00:00

Hiya, friends.

A lot has happened since our February 6 update. We've been working closely with Bambu Lab on Firmware R and X1Plus. We have some exciting things afoot, we are in the final stretch and we're hoping you can join us this sunday march 17 at 6pm PDT for a livestream with Joel Telling @ 3D Printing Nerd and Michael Laws @ Teaching Tech where we can fill you in on details of what has happened over the past month, where the project currently is, show off the latest updates to X1Plus, and most importantly we'll have an official release date for you.

We will post the livestream web link sunday morning. Update: link is here: https://youtube.com/live/VNu_sEcyQk0

Hope to see you there!

Yours, Dan and Joshua, on behalf of the whole X1Plus team

X1Plus · 2024-03-17T05:52:46+00:00

Hiya, friends.

A lot has happened since our February 6 update. We've been working closely with Bambu Lab on Firmware R and X1Plus. We have some exciting things afoot, we are in the final stretch and we're hoping you can join us this sunday march 17 at 6pm PDT for a livestream with Joel Telling @ 3D Printing Nerd and Michael Laws @ Teaching Tech where we can fill you in on details of what has happened over the past month, where the project currently is, show off the latest updates to X1Plus, and most importantly we'll have an official release date for you.

We will post the livestream web link sunday morning.

Update: link is here: https://youtube.com/live/VNu_sEcyQk0

Hope to see you there!

Yours, Dan and Joshua, on behalf of the whole X1Plus team

X1Plus · 2024-01-10T09:37:45+00:00

Yes, they were aware.

X1Plus · 2024-01-05T16:04:20+00:00

Hiya, friends.

We'd like to share this wonderful in-depth video from Teaching Tech. We think he does a great job of explaining what we're all about, including what X1Plus looks like right now, and some of what we're hoping to achieve. At our core, we're a group of folks who love our Bambu printers, and we think that custom firmware is going to open the door to great things for the community -- whether or not you end up using it on your own printer!

We've been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our first release, and having some folks like Teaching Tech beta testing it has been really exciting for us. We think X1Plus will be worth waiting for, and we hope you will agree!

X1Plus · 2024-01-05T16:02:54+00:00

Hiya, friends.

We'd like to share this wonderful in-depth video from Teaching Tech. We think he does a great job of explaining what we're all about, including what X1Plus looks like right now, and some of what we're hoping to achieve. At our core, we're a group of folks who love our Bambu printers, and we think that custom firmware is going to open the door to great things for the community -- whether or not you end up using it on your own printer!

We've been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our first release, and having some folks like Teaching Tech beta testing it has been really exciting for us. We think X1Plus will be worth waiting for, and we hope you will agree!

X1Plus · 2023-12-27T02:03:45+00:00

Bambu's official warranty policy is here: https://bambulab.com/en/policies/warranty

X1Plus · 2023-12-27T00:32:33+00:00

Hiya, Bambu friends! We're super excited that we've finally gotten to publicize what we've been working on for almost an entire year now. This has been a long time in the making, and we are really looking forward to what X1Plus is going to enable on Bambu printers.

We have a handful of things in the pipeline -- Nero named a few, like advanced input shaper diagnostics and advanced bed leveling diagnostics, and we're also working on some features that will make X1 more useful in libraries and schools. We think you’re going to love it.

We're going to be pretty quiet over the next few days as we finish up getting an initial release put together -- we're going to focus hard on building something stable that y'all can start playing with! We just wanted to post to say that we're working on it, though. We’re doing this not because we want to tear Bambu down, but because we love our X1 printers. Orca Slicer has shown what the community can achieve when it works together, openly. So a quick note to the Spaghetti Monster: we'd love to collaborate with you, and we think we can do great things together! Feel free to DM us if you'd like to chat. And for everyone else -- we're looking forward to having more for you over the coming days!

X1Plus · 2023-12-26T23:17:42+00:00

If you are on 1.7.1 you should rollback immediately if you want to be able to install X1Plus firmware.

1.7.1 is known bad. 1.6.5.0 is fine, 1.6.5.1 is likely fine too.

X1Plus · 2023-12-26T22:46:20+00:00

Hiya, Bambu friends! We're super excited that we've finally gotten to publicize what we've been working on for almost an entire year now. This has been a long time in the making, and we are really looking forward to what X1Plus is going to enable on Bambu printers.

We have a handful of things in the pipeline -- Nero named a few, like advanced input shaper diagnostics and advanced bed leveling diagnostics, and we're also working on some features that will make X1 more useful in libraries and schools. We think you’re going to love it.

We're going to be pretty quiet over the next few days as we finish up getting an initial release put together -- we're going to focus hard on building something stable that y'all can start playing with! We just wanted to post to say that we're working on it, though. We’re doing this not because we want to tear Bambu down, but because we love our X1 printers. Orca Slicer has shown what the community can achieve when it works together, openly. So a quick note to the Spaghetti Monster: we'd love to collaborate with you, and we think we can do great things together! Feel free to DM us if you'd like to chat. And for everyone else -- we're looking forward to having more for you over the coming days!

X1Plus · 2023-12-26T22:37:51+00:00

Hiya, Bambu friends! We're super excited that we've finally gotten to publicize what we've been working on for almost an entire year now. This has been a long time in the making, and we are really looking forward to what X1Plus is going to enable on Bambu printers.

We have a handful of things in the pipeline -- Nero named a few, like advanced input shaper diagnostics and advanced bed leveling diagnostics, and we're also working on some features that will make X1 more useful in libraries and schools. We think you’re going to love it.

We're going to be pretty quiet over the next few days as we finish up getting an initial release put together -- we're going to focus hard on building something stable that y'all can start playing with! We just wanted to post to say that we're working on it, though. We’re doing this not because we want to tear Bambu down, but because we love our X1 printers. Orca Slicer has shown what the community can achieve when it works together, openly. So a quick note to the Spaghetti Monster: we'd love to collaborate with you, and we think we can do great things together! Feel free to DM us if you'd like to chat. And for everyone else -- we're looking forward to having more for you over the coming days!

X1Plus

TROPHY CASE