[Poll] What kind of 3D Printing apps would you like to see on the AstroPrint app marketplace?

AstroPrint Cloud Service
#1

As you know, we will be releasing an API to our cloud platform soon.

This means that anyone is going to be able to create FREE or PREMIUM 3D Printing related apps on our platform.

Just to get an idea of what folks are interested in, my questions are:

1.) What type of apps would you like to see on the Astroprint app marketplace?

and…

2.) If you are a developer, what features and functionality would you like to see on our API?

Let’s use this thread to brainstorm ideas.

This will not only help us provide you with a better experience, but it will also help potential developers get ideas on what type of apps to build.

Would love to hear what you think. :slight_smile:

Also, we were thinking about getting a couple of independent game developers to build some apps on our platform – for example, having a video game themed app that would allow users to 3D Print characters from the game.

If you have any ideas or leads on potential game developers, let us know!

Alright. As far as ideas for the app marketplace, these could be potentially useful:

  • An app to manage multiple 3D Printers with access control: This app could be used in a makerspace or a library atmosphere where you could give multiple people access to the same 3D Printer without them being able to screw around with settings too much. Ideally, this app would also having a queuing feature so the prints would be processed as First In First Out.

  • An app that could detect filament jams: Not sure how this would technically work, but it would be cool to have an app that would detect spaghetti filament/print failures (i.e: using computer vision for example) and automatically stop the print or warn you.

  • Live interactive map of people 3D Printing around the world: I was imagining something like this that would show people who are 3D Printing on the astroprint platform live. Not sure if this would be a huge privacy issue, but I am throwing it out there. It wouldn’t identify anyone, rather it would just show which part of the world they are located in.

What do you think?

#2

I’d like to see:

An app to streamline the printing of e-NABLE prosthetics: (http://enablingthefuture.org/) there are a handful of OFFICIAL designs on thingiverse. the app could enumerate those specific designs, making it easier to find exactly what you want without wading through unrelated stuff with similar names. the app should also let you scale a design appropriately (a common print scale is 120% rather than 100%), let you pick left or right hand, and take care of slicing EVERYTHING and sticking it ALL into the queue. it would also be nice for the app to let you enter which colors of filament you have available and to select which parts should be printed on a single plate, prompting you to feed the proper color filament just prior to printing each plate. with that last option, it would be great to visualize the custom-colored prosthetic prior to slicing all the build plates. this would make astroprint a fantastic resource for e-NABLE community members to help kids and families customize a prosthetic and iterate over the aesthetics many times in a visual manner prior to printing anything.

1 Like
#3

I’d like a G-Code viewer either in the dash board or somewhere else…even something simple like:

http://gcode.ws

with a way to specify which g-code to be viewed…I actually think this might be better as part to the file manager…maybe in the pull down with print and download…

#4

Have you checked out the one in our desktop app? We will at some point port that to the web

#5

Much needed when you work on a chromebook.