Besides monitoring print quality, we needed a practical way to manage the printer remotely. Our first idea was to look into OctoPrint, which is one of the most well-known tools in the 3D printing community. However, things didn’t go exactly as planned, and we had to pivot our strategy.
The Experience with OctoPrint
We started by setting up a dedicated Raspberry Pi 5 for the task. We flashed the official OctoPi OS onto the SD card, configured the network settings, and got the server up and running without any issues.
The real roadblock hit when we tried connecting the printer to the Raspberry Pi. The serial connection over the USB cable simply refused to work. We tried tweaking the baud rates and changing the ports, but OctoPrint just couldn’t establish a successful connection with the machine.
After doing some digging online in forums and 3D printing communities, we unfortunately found out that the Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus has a known history of bad implementation and compatibility issues with OctoPrint due to how its stock firmware handles communication.
The Role of OctoEverywhere in Remote Printing
During our research, we also looked into OctoEverywhere, which is widely considered the go-to solution for most makers wanting to achieve secure, full-featured remote access. Under normal circumstances, OctoEverywhere is the ideal way to bridge your local printer interface to the outside world.
It offers massive benefits for standard setups:
- Free and Secure Remote Access: It allows you to monitor and control your printer from anywhere outside your local Wi-Fi network without risky port forwarding.
- AI Failure Detection: It includes cloud-based AI print failure detection to automatically catch “spaghetti” or adhesion issues.
- Cross-Platform Support: While it started as an OctoPrint plugin, it has evolved to natively support Klipper ecosystems (Fluidd/Mainsail) via Moonraker.
We initially considered setting up OctoEverywhere to manage the printer remotely. However, because we hit a wall with OctoPrint itself, and realized Fluidd already gives us all the local control and webcam output we need out of the box, we decided to stick with the simpler local approach for now to avoid installing additional third-party software on the printer.
The Solution: Fluidd
Faced with the connection issue, we decided to drop OctoPrint and take a look at what already came with the printer out of the box. The Neptune 4 Plus runs Klipper firmware and comes pre-equipped with Fluidd, a very lightweight and modern web interface.
Fluidd was clearly the simpler, cleaner approach because it didn’t require any additional software modifications or external plugins to get the core features running.
What can we do with Fluidd?
Without needing to install anything extra, Fluidd gives us direct access to pretty much all the essential actions and functions we need for our automation project:
- Checking the live printing status in real-time;
- Viewing the webcam stream output for remote monitoring;
- Controlling nozzle and bed temperatures;
- Sending G-code files directly over the local network.
Conclusion
Sometimes Plan A doesn’t work out, and the poor integration between OctoPrint and the Neptune 4 Plus forced us to change direction. In the end, Fluidd turned out to be the absolute best choice for our setup. It kept us from bloating the printer with unneeded software and solved our remote control problem in a fast, native, and efficient way.