How to manage and print pre-sliced files via HA

[RyanEwen]

I am hoping to move away from a farm software that I use as this integration becomes more and more feature complete. The only thing stopping me now is the ability to upload sliced files into HA somewhere, and then choose to print them via a GUI. I'm certain someone has done this before but my searches aren't coming up with good results. I suspect a pinch point will be AMS mappings (which I do require). I don't imagine there's any existing UI for that, or is there?

Has anyone done this before?

I'm basically hoping to run my own private system with basic features of a system such as SimplyPrint. Some flows that I am hoping to have:

• Pick a printer -> Pick a sliced file -> Set AMS mappings -> Start print
• Pick a sliced file -> Select printers and set AMS mappings for each printer -> Start prints

I assume the sliced files will have to be transferred from HA storage to the printer SD card every time a print is started, even if it has already been printed a million times before, and this is fine (no worse than manually slicing / printing, or using SimplyPrint). IIRC there might already be a way for the printer or integration to skip transferring a file if it's already on the SD card, which would be a bonus.

[AdrianGarside]

The new print history cache gets you close. But it's driven by active prints. Once you print it's cached and available for subsequent re-prints. But you have to print it once. Re-print does not re-upload (or re-download) prints if they're already on the printer / in the local HA matching cache.

[AdrianGarside]

I can make the search work against folder names as well as the file names (if it doesn’t already) then you’d be able to quickly narrow down to sets of prints to choose from. Creating UI for folder navigation would be a lot more involved so unlikely to happen.

[RyanEwen]

Do you think it's possible to leverage the built-in media management features of HA for this? I know other integrations are doing it for non-media, for example Xbox shows all the installed games on a console and lets you launch them from the Media area.

[AdrianGarside]

It might be. Home assistant documentation is pretty bad so it’s hard to work out what can be done some times. I’ll see what I can find. I am putting the model cache and timelapses in the accessible media location so if there’s an existing file browsing control I can use and point at that then it would be an easier add.

[jneilliii]

I was looking for file listing support without filename knowledge in the pybambu module. I noticed that search already pulls a full list to iterate over with the ftp connection. Would be helpful to have those results available via other method call. Unless I'm missing something?

[AdrianGarside]

That only gets used now in rare scenarios because it can take many minutes to get that directory listing on a P1 printer. And that wouldn't be a great experience for this scenario anyway as you need the 3mf file content to be able to craft the print command correctly - you'd have to know which was the original filament index for that print (e.g. was it slot 3 from the second AMS) since the ams mapping is from that original index to the current index. There is no way to tell the printer to just print with the original filament indexes. Hence the local caching so I have access to all the information I need and can send the content to a different printer if desired.