[Blueprint] Bambu Lab 3D Printer – Cost Notification (Telegram, Bambu HACS)

[soflane]

Hi everyone!
I’ve published a blueprint (it’s my first!) that calculates filament, electricity, and depreciation per-print costs a my Bambu Lab printer and sends a Telegram message (official integration) with a full breakdown and the cover image from the Bambu HACS integration. Filament length is optional.

EDIT : the import link is now working

One-click import:

What it does

• Tracks kWh used for the print (from your smart plug’s cumulative kWh)
• Uses Bambu HACS sensors for status, start/end time, (optional) cover image, usage hours, weight, (optional) length
• Computes:
  • Filament cost (weight × price/kg)
  • Electricity cost (kWh × price/kWh)
  • Depreciation cost = purchase_cost / lifetime_hours × hours_printed
• Sends a Telegram photo + caption (fallback to text-only)
• Optional “Do Not Disturb” for pause notifications
• Optional cumulative stats helpers

You’ll need

• Bambu Lab HACS integration configured
• A smart plug (or similar) exposing a cumulative kWh sensor
• Telegram Bot (official integration) and your chat_id
• A few helpers in HA:
  • input_number.3d_print_kwh_start (stores starting kWh per print)
  • (Optional totals) input_number helpers for cumulative filament weight, cumulative filament cost, cumulative electrical cost, cumulative total cost, and last print kWh used

Blueprint inputs (high level)

• HA URL (base, no trailing slash)
• Printer sensors: print status, start time, end time, usage hours
• Image entity (optional): cover image from the Bambu integration
• Weight (g), length (optional) (mm/m)
• Energy (kWh) sensor, Start kWh helper
• Costs: filament €/kg, electricity €/kWh, printer purchase cost, lifetime hours
• Telegram chat ID(s) (comma-separated)
• (Optional) sleeping toggle & cumulative helper entities
• Disable Image and Currency Symbol

Installation

More info on GitHub README

1. Create input helpers

2. Import the blueprint

3. Create a new automation from this blueprint and fill the inputs (see below).

Creating the helpers

In Home Assistant, go to Settings → Devices & Services → Helpers → Create Helper → Number:

• input_number.3d_print_kwh_start (no unit required)
• Optionally: input_number.3d_cumulative_filament_weight (g), input_number.3d_cumulative_filament_cost, input_number.3d_cumulative_electrical_cost, input_number.3d_cumulative_total_cost, input_number.3d_last_print_kwh_used

Image from Colton Onushko’s post

Inputs & What They Do

Input	Required	Notes
Home Assistant URL (ha_url)		Base URL (no trailing slash). Used to prefix image URLs in Telegram. Example: http://homeassistant.local:8123 or your external URL.
Printer Status Sensor		sensor.<printer>_print_status from the Bambu HACS integration. Triggers prepare/finish/pause.
Print Cover Image		The image entity exposed by the Bambu integration, if available. Leave empty to send text-only.
Start Time / End Time Sensors		sensor.<printer>_start_time and sensor.<printer>_end_time from the Bambu integration. Used to compute duration.
Print Weight Sensor		Grams (integration sensor or input_number). Used for filament cost (Typically from the Bambu integration)
Print Length Sensor		Sensor/helper for filament length (mm or m). Leave empty if you don’t have it.
Total Usage Hours Sensor		sensor.<printer>_total_usage_hours (or similar) from the integration, for all-time usage stats.
Energy Consumption Sensor		Your smart plug’s cumulative kWh sensor for the printer.
Start kWh Helper		input_number to store the start kWh reading. Create one (e.g. input_number.3d_print_kwh_start).
Filament Price per KG		e.g. 25.99 for €25.99/kg (your currency).
Electricity Cost per kWh		e.g. 0.385 for €0.385/kWh.
Printer Purchase Cost		e.g. 1000.
Printer Lifetime (hours)		e.g. 6000.
Telegram Chat ID(s)		One or more chat IDs (comma-separated) . See below to find your chat ID(s). e.g. -1001234567890, 12345678
Sleep Mode Toggle		input_boolean to suppress pause alerts (DND).
Cumulative Stats helpers (Filament Weight, Filament Cost, Electrical Cost, Total Cost, Last Print kWh)		Create input_number helpers if you want totals updated after each print: cumulative_filament_weight (g), cumulative_filament_cost, cumulative_electrical_cost, cumulative_total_cost, and (optionally) last_print_kwh_used.
Disable Image Sending		If true, always send text (no image).
Currency Symbol		Defaults to $. Use €, £, etc. Only symbol (no spaces). Used for display only

Why length is optional? Cost uses weight × price/kg. Length (m/ft) is nice for reporting but not essential.

Example message

🎉 3D PRINT COMPLETED
⏱️ Duration: 2 hours, 48 minutes
⚖️ Weight: 92.0 g – Cost: €2.39
🔌 Power: 0.31 kWh – Cost: €0.12
🛠️ Depreciation: €0.41
💰 Total Cost: €2.92

(“Filament Length” line appears only if you supply a length sensor.)

Notes

• If the photo can’t be sent, the blueprint automatically sends the text-only message.
• If you don’t have a length sensor, just leave it empty.
• If you prefer only text, enable Disable Image.

Credit

This blueprint is heavily inspired by Colton Onushko’s automation. Big thanks to him !
I replaced Discord with Telegram and rely exclusively on the Bambu HACS integration instead of OrcaSlicer and Colton’s python script.

Happy printing! Feedback, questions or PRs are welcome.

[Sir_Goodenough ((SG) WhatAreWeFixing.Today)]

Hello soflane,

Looks awesome, but your link is not working…

I am guessing because it is very long, 2 sub folders in and one of the folders is long with spaces instead of '-'s likely.
My suggestion is move it and test it until you find something that works…
I tried both of your ‘my links’.

[soflane]

Sorry!!! As I said it’s the first time I post a blueprint
The link is now working.
Enjoy!

[zodyking (The Engineer)]

was a cool idea

[The-May]

Doesnt seem to work on my Instance. I have several issues:

1.I get Error while executing automation See log:
automation.auto_bambu_cost_notification: Failed to load URL: 404

i tried my publicly accessible https://Adress and then i tried
http://internalip.adress.of.ha:8123 and still get the issue and i wont get smarter when i watch the traces.

and second issue: It wants me to create a helper but i think this helper doesnt make sense, wouldnt a text helper make more sence since

Now i can have 0 to 100 - but that wont help, wont a input text make generally make more sense?!

downloading opening the trace, it seems to not properly push the image and therefore screw something up. Im on HAOS - do i need to create folders so that the image gets saved? where does it get saved anyway or whitelist a folder for this token image?

[The-May]

Okay in the meantime I debugged a bit and found the issue on this
First of all ignore Topics 2 and 3 since they are self-inflicted issues and can be narrowed down to my own incompetence.

I focused on question 1 since this is clearly a bug in the Blueprint.
So back to topic:

I found out that sending without a picture works totally fine

So i was trying to find out why the picture push didnt work and why the message does not get sent at all.

for some reason it uses a wrongly formatted URL (thats why I get error 404) with two slashes, even though my _ha_url variable is totally fine and explicitly defined in the trace log:

      "changed_variables": {
        "_ha_url": "http://192.168.1.211:8123",

BUT it seems to add two slashes “//” to it instead of one in the trace log.

After that I changed the url to http://192.168.1.211:8123/" for the lulz (despite what the blueprint tells me) and voila: triple slashes.

It seems to be that the blueprint is flawed in line 446
url: '{{ _ha_url }}/{{ cover_image_url }}'
since the cover_image_url already has a “/” in the beginning
I went into the dir of the code (\config\blueprints\automation\soflane) of it, made a copy and removed the excess slash so the var gets glued together correctly to:
url: '{{ _ha_url }}{{ cover_image_url }}'
then i copied the yaml into \config\blueprints\automation and now it works as a quick fix…

and it works now.

I just created a pull-request for removing that excess character

[soflane]

Hey there — thanks a lot for digging in and for the PR!

Sorry for the late reply — I’ve been quite busy lately and wanted to take the time to check why it didn’t cause an error on my setup.

You were absolutely right: the URL was being built as {{ _ha_url }}/{{ cover_image_url }} while cover_image_url already starts with /, so some setups ended up with a // and a 404. On my side, it “worked” because my reverse proxy (Traefik) automatically normalized the double slash — which is why I didn’t catch it earlier. I’ve just merged your PR!

A few extra notes for anyone following along:

• No local file saving needed: The image comes from the Bambu integration as a URL path (served by HA). Nothing is written to disk for this blueprint, and you don’t need to create folders or whitelist anything.
• About the helper type (“Start kWh”): It must be an input_number, not a text helper — the blueprint performs arithmetic with it. The default 0–100 range you see is just Home Assistant’s default when creating a number helper. Feel free to set a wide range and small step, depending on your smart plug’s precision. For example:
  • Min: 0
  • Max: 100000
  • Step: 0.001
  • Mode: Box

If anyone still encounters URL edge cases (some proxies can be… creative ), you can add a more robust version like this:

# Replace:
url: '{{ _ha_url }}{{ cover_image_url }}'

# With:
url: >-
  {{ _ha_url.rstrip('/') ~ '/' ~ (cover_image_url | string).lstrip('/') }}

That ensures the URL is properly joined regardless of extra slashes.
With the merged fix, most setups won’t need it — but I’m leaving it here as a “sticky note” for reference.

Again, huge thanks for reporting, testing, and sending the PR — really appreciate the help!

[yannouche4260]

Hello, I’ve managed to configure everything except for sending the message via Telegram, which isn’t working. I’m entering my ID (numbers) but the message isn’t being sent. When I test it using the developer tools, it works.

[soflane]

Do you have any logs to share ?

[yannouche4260]

Sorry, It was me who made a mistake. With the /
I downloaded it again from GitHub and everything is fine, thank you!

[martinontheroad]

Nice - the cumulative trackers are just what I was looking for

[yannouche4260]

Hello, I added a bot to HA for Alarmo. I created discussion groups for ease of use. However, it no longer works with blueprints. I correctly specified the group ID with the hyphen (-) in front. Here’s what I see in the automation logs.