Hi everyone!
We’re currently working on a dedicated wall-mounted control panel based on Home Assistant.
The idea started from a very practical internal problem. We run a small workshop and use several Bambu Lab printers as part of our production process. When we had one printer next to our desks, monitoring it was easy. Now we have six, and constantly checking each printer manually has become increasingly inconvenient.
So we decided to experiment with a central dashboard.
At first, the goal was simple: build a 24" wall-mounted touchscreen panel to monitor and control our 3D printing setup. But the more we worked through the requirements, the more it started to look like this could become something broader than just a printer dashboard — possibly a standalone Assistant control panel for workshops, small studios, homes.
What we want this setup to do:
- show the status of multiple Bambu Lab printers in one place
- touch control
- run Home Assistant dashboards without noticeable lag
- work reliably in kiosk mode
- start automatically after power loss
- reconnect to Home Assistant without manual login after reboot
- support remote reboot
- be powered cleanly via PoE
We’re leaning toward Android for the panel side, mainly because of WebView support, kiosk software options, remote management, and touchscreen integration. That said, I’m not fully convinced yet that Android is automatically the best choice for a 24/7 wall panel, so this is something we want to test properly.
Some open questions we still need to solve:
- Which Android board is reliable enough for long-term dashboard use? RK3566?
- Is a watchdog actually needed, or does it just add unnecessary complexity?
- How stable is the Home Assistant session after reboots and network interruptions?
- Could this become a useful ready-to-use device beyond our own printer setup?
This is still an early-stage build log, not a finished product. We have almost finalized the Android board choice, and the next step is testing the PoE setup and checking whether the whole system can run reliably for long periods.
I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has built something similar — not only for 3D printers, but also for workshops, offices, labs, or Home Assistant wall panels in general.