TinyMakerWifi

1What this firmware adds

TinyMakerWifi is a modified firmware for the open-source TinyMaker MSLA (resin) 3D printer. It keeps everything the original firmware does and adds a wireless layer on top — so you can send models straight from your slicer and update the printer without ever touching the SD card or a USB cable.

• WiFi, set up from your phone on first boot — no credentials in code.
• Direct upload from PrusaSlicer with the “Send to printer” button.
• Import .sl1/.zip from the SD card — no network needed.
• A web dashboard — print status, controls, SD manager and a 3D preview in any browser.
• Over-the-air firmware updates — the printer updates itself over WiFi.
• Resin estimation & level tracking — how much resin a model needs, and how much is left in the VAT.
• Home Assistant / MQTT integration (optional).
• Telegram notifications — print finished / canceled / low-resin pause, straight to your phone.

Everything wireless can be switched off right on the printer (System → Advanced), so you can always fall back to plain, offline SD-card printing.

2Quick start

1. Power on. On first boot the printer opens a TinyMaker-Setup WiFi hotspot.
2. Join it from your phone and pick your home WiFi in the little page that pops up. The printer reboots and connects (~5 s).
3. Find the printer’s address under System → WiFi Info (or use tinymaker.local).
4. Send a model from PrusaSlicer (“Send to printer”), or copy an .sl1/.zip onto the SD card.
5. Print. Pick the model in the Print menu and press OK — or start it from the web dashboard.

3Installing the firmware (first time)

This one-time step is done over USB. After it, every future update is wireless (see Updating the firmware). If your printer already runs TinyMakerWifi, skip this section.

Which file?

Releases contain two files — they are not interchangeable:

Flash it — easiest way (browser, nothing to install)

1. Download the latest firmware-full.bin from the project’s Releases page.
2. Open esptool.spacehuhn.com in Chrome or Edge, plug in the printer via USB and click Connect.
3. Remove any pre-filled rows, click ADD, choose firmware-full.bin, and set its address to 0.
4. Click Program, wait for it to finish, then power-cycle the printer.

The first boot after flashing takes a few extra seconds and starts the TinyMaker-Setup hotspot. Printer settings (exposure, layer height…) return to factory defaults — unless a settings backup is on the SD card: the printer then offers to restore everything on first boot (see Backup & restore).

4Connecting to WiFi

1. Power on the printer. On first boot it starts a TinyMaker-Setup access point.
2. Connect to it with your phone — a setup page opens automatically (or browse to http://192.168.4.1).
3. Choose your home WiFi network and enter the password.
4. The printer connects and briefly shows its IP address. Credentials are stored, so later boots connect on their own in about 5 seconds.

If the saved network can’t be reached, the printer simply boots offline after 15 s — printing from the SD card works as always. WiFi status, signal strength and IP are always under System → WiFi Info.

Resetting WiFi

To move the printer to another network, erase the stored credentials:

• From the menu: System → WiFi Info → press OK → confirm. The printer reboots into the TinyMaker-Setup portal.
• Emergency reset: hold the BACK button while powering the printer on — use this if it keeps trying an old network and you can’t reach the menu.

5The printer screens

The small status display drives the whole on-printer interface — WiFi setup, upload progress, the resin estimate, the device toggles and self-update. Three buttons: Back, Up and OK. A green (connected) or grey (offline) dot on the main menu shows WiFi status.

The System menu is where the new features live: WiFi Info, Advanced (device toggles), Update (firmware) and About (version and lifetime print hours).

6Printing from PrusaSlicer

The printer emulates the Prusa SL1 network protocol, so PrusaSlicer’s “Send to printer” works out of the box.

1. Import the TinyMaker printer profile (TinyMaker.ini, in the repo) via File → Import → Import Config.
2. Add a physical printer: click the cog next to the printer profile → Add physical printer. Set Hostname to tinymaker.local (or the IP from System → WiFi Info); the API key can be any text.
3. Click Test — it should report success (the printer must be on and on WiFi).
4. Slice, then press Send to printer. The printer shows Receiving → Unpacking → Model ready, and the model appears in the Print menu.

7Printing from the SD card (no network)

No WiFi? Copy an .sl1 or .zip (exported by PrusaSlicer or UVtools) into the root of the SD card. It appears in the Print menu in blue, among the models.

• Press OK on a blue entry to convert it into a printable model (progress is shown). When done, the model appears in the list and the archive is deleted from the card.
• Long-press OK on a blue entry to delete the archive without importing.

8Starting & deleting models

In the Print menu:

• Start a print: select a model and give OK a short press. The preview shows Layers / Height / Time; press Up there to estimate resin (see below), or OK to start.
• Delete a model: press and hold OK for ~1.5 s. A Delete model? confirmation appears — release, then OK = delete, Back = keep. Large models take a moment (hundreds of layer files).

9Resin estimate & level tracking

The printer has no resin sensor — instead it keeps count. Every printed layer’s cured volume is subtracted from the VAT level, and the estimate survives reboots and firmware updates.

Estimate before printing

On a model’s print preview, press Up to estimate the resin it needs. It is shown in ml and in vat fills — e.g. 12.4 ml = 0.8 VAT. Your VAT size is adjustable (10–40 ml, default 15) in Settings. Live ml is shown while printing.

Level tracking & refills

• “Resin left (est.)” is shown on the dashboard (and as a Home Assistant sensor with a low-resin alert).
• After refilling, tell the printer: System → Advanced → VAT refilled, or the VAT refilled button on the dashboard. The estimate restarts from a full VAT.
• Ask refill (default On): every print begins with a “VAT refilled?” question so the estimate stays honest. Tidy users who press VAT refilled themselves can turn it off.
• Before a print, if the level is low (or a fresh estimate says the model needs more than what’s left), the printer shows “Low resin!” with the numbers — start anyway or go back.
• Low resin pause (optional, default Off): mid-print, when the level hits the threshold, the printer finishes the layer, lifts and pauses with “Refill VAT!” — top up, press VAT refilled or resume.

10The web dashboard

Open the printer’s IP address in any browser for the full dashboard: live print status and controls, SD-card management with one-click start/import, device settings and firmware updates — in tabs styled to match the printer.

On a larger screen it spreads into two columns:

3D preview & live print progress

Open a model’s details and press Preview 3D: your browser rebuilds the shape from the sliced layers and draws it inside the build-volume box — so you can tell models apart without printing them. Start a print and the same view becomes a live progress render: the printed part fills in with color, the rest stays a ghost outline. It costs the printer nothing (the browser renders from a few prefetched layers).

11Advanced menu & switches

System → Advanced on the printer holds the device toggles — OK changes a value, Back returns:

• WiFi Off makes the printer fully offline, like the original firmware. Toggling it asks “Reboot now?”. Turn it back on right here — no reflash or reset needed.
• Web control Off makes the dashboard view-only: people can watch the print, but every action is disabled. Turn it back on on the printer (the settings form is one of the things it locks).
• If WiFi is off and you open System → Update, the printer offers to enable WiFi temporarily just for the update.

Both switches default to On and stay On after upgrading from an older version — nothing changes until you change it.

Exposure calibration test

Exposure time is the single most important resin parameter — and every resin (even every color) cures differently. The test finds your resin’s time in one go: the printer cures an 8-bar strip straight from its masking LCD, each bar with a different exposure. No slicer, no SD file.

The bar times are proportional to your current Regular exposure (R) — from 40 % to 160 % of it, so the spread is meaningful for fast and slow resins alike. Bar 5 (100 %) is always your current setting:

The ladder follows your setting automatically. To test shorter (or longer) times, just change Regular exposure in one place — dashboard → Settings → Regular exposure → Save, or the printer’s Settings menu — and the test range recalculates itself; the Advanced menu row shows the current range (e.g. “2-16s strip”). After the test, set the winning bar’s time as your final value.

1. Prepare: resin in the vat (stir it first!), build plate removed — the strip cures directly on the vat film. Make sure Dry run is off.
2. Run: System → Advanced → Exposure test → Start. A progress bar runs for the longest bar’s time (~half a minute); Back cancels.
3. Peel & rinse: gloves on, lift the strip off the film with a soft plastic scraper, rinse in IPA, dry.
4. Judge the bars against the light:
   • Under-exposed (short end): thin, rubbery, fuzzy edges, breaks or partly stuck to the film.
   • Just right: sturdy, sharp clean edges, even thickness.
   • Over-exposed (long end): fatter than its neighbours, bloated edges, a thin parasitic film around it (light bleed).
   • All bars nearly identical? Your resin cures faster than the shortest step — lower Regular exposure (e.g. to 8 s) and run the test again. Note: a fresh, unwashed strip always feels rubbery; judge after an IPA rinse, and flexible resins (ABS-like) stay bendy by design.
5. Set it: pick the lowest time that still cures sharp and sturdy (best detail; if torn between two, take the longer one) and enter it as Regular exposure in Settings. Identify bars by their dots (1 dot = shortest) and read the time from the table above. Keep Base exposure at roughly 2.5× the new Regular — it’s about first-layer adhesion, not detail.

Advanced: your resin’s working curve (Jacobs)

The test strip holds more data than “which bar looks best”. Cure depth grows with the logarithm of exposure time — that’s why doubling the time doesn’t double the thickness, and why you judge bars by edges and holes, not by how thick they feel. If you want numbers:

1. Measure the thickness of at least 3–4 bars with calipers (skip broken ones).
2. Plot thickness against ln(seconds) (any spreadsheet; use the bar times from the table above). The points form a straight line — that’s the resin’s working curve.
3. The slope is D_p (how deep light penetrates); where the line crosses zero thickness is E_c (the minimum exposure that cures anything). Together: depth = Dp · ln(t / Ec).
4. Read your time: for reliable layer bonding you want the cure depth around 2× your layer height (0.1 mm for 0.05 mm layers) — find where the line reaches that thickness and use that time as Regular exposure.

Boot animations

The printer can play a short animation on its screen at power-on — and you can swap it. Installed animations live on the SD card and are picked in two places:

• On the printer: System → Advanced → Boot animation — OK cycles Default (the built-in logo) and every installed animation.
• In the dashboard: the Boot animation card in the Settings tab — pick one, or delete animations you no longer want.

Getting new animations onto the printer:

• From the community site: browse the animation library and press Send to printer — the printer downloads and installs it in one step (WiFi and Web control must be on).
• By hand: copy a .tmb animation file into the /bootanim folder on the SD card.

Boot animations were contributed by Tanner Steorts (@Tann2019).

12Updating the firmware

🔒 Firmware flashing is blocked while printing, and the web paths need Web control on. (PrusaSlicer upload is separate and works any time.)

Three ways to update:

• On the printer (no computer): System → Update shows the installed version and checks GitHub for the latest. If a newer one exists, the Install button lights up — press OK and the printer downloads and flashes it over WiFi.
• From the dashboard — the Update tab: installed vs latest with an Install latest button, a version picker (install any released version; downgrades ask to confirm) and a file upload for a firmware.bin.
• For developers: PlatformIO OTA via the tinymaker-ota environment (open System → Update on the printer first — that path keeps the strict gate).

Two comforts while updating: the printer also checks by itself — shortly after WiFi connects at boot it looks for a newer version and shows “Update available — Install / Later” on the screen (choosing Later offers to turn the check off; the switch lives in System → Advanced → Boot update and in dashboard Settings). And when you start an install from the browser, the dashboard locks under an “Updating firmware” overlay and reloads itself when the printer is back — no guessing whether it finished.

✅ Don’t worry about a failed update. The printer keeps two firmware copies (dual OTA partition), so a failed flash falls back to the previous one. Just don’t power off mid-update.

Backup & restore

Everything you have configured — print settings, device toggles, MQTT, even the lifetime print and UV LED counters — fits in one backup file. In the dashboard’s Settings tab:

• Download backup — saves tinymaker-backup.json to your computer.
• Backup to SD — stores the file on the printer’s SD card. Do this before a full USB reflash: the reflash wipes all settings, but on the first boot the printer finds the backup on the SD card and asks “Restore settings from SD backup?” — one press and everything is back. Settings shows when the SD backup was made, so you can tell at a glance whether it’s fresh.
• Restore from SD — applies the backup stored on the SD card at any time (the button is enabled only when one is present).
• Restore from file — applies an uploaded backup at any time.

💡 WiFi credentials are managed separately (by the WiFi setup portal) and are not in the backup — after a full USB reflash you reconnect to WiFi once, everything else restores. The backup includes your MQTT password, so treat the file accordingly.