I Built a Raspberry Pi Control Panel for My 3D Print Farm

August 28, 2026

I sell products across five different platforms and run nine 3D printers from three different manufacturers.

That means several printer apps, different slicing programs, separate order dashboards and far too many places to check whenever I want to know what is happening in my business.

For years, I have wanted one screen that could bring everything together.

I wanted to see which printers were running, whether any had errors, what orders needed to be shipped, how much I had earned and what tasks still needed to be completed.

Rather than waiting for somebody else to build exactly what I needed, I made it myself using a Raspberry Pi, Home Assistant and a 10.1-inch touchscreen.

Disclosure: Xbonfire supplied the touchscreen panel used in this project after I contacted them. They only requested the raw footage of me unboxing and using it. They did not request this video or control what I said. The link below is an affiliate link, which means I may receive a commission if you buy through it.

Get the Xbonfire Raspberry Pi Touchscreen Panel

The problem with running a growing print farm

When you only own one or two printers, checking them individually is not a major issue.

As the number of machines grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of everything.

My current setup includes Bambu Lab printers, an Eryone Thinker X400 and a Prusa XL. Each manufacturer uses its own software, monitoring system and mobile application.

My orders are spread across:

Etsy
Shopify
eBay
TikTok Shop
SeekMake

Some tools can combine several sales platforms, but I could not find anything that supported every service I use while also showing my printers in the way I wanted.

Printer-monitoring dashboards exist too, but they tend to focus only on the machines. They do not show my orders, revenue, shipping deadlines, task list or smart-home controls.

I wanted a proper control panel for the whole business.

The Xbonfire touchscreen panel

The display I used is the Xbonfire 10.1-inch Raspberry Pi touchscreen monitor.

It is designed to house a Raspberry Pi inside the back of the display, creating a tidy all-in-one system rather than leaving the board, cables and screen scattered across a desk.

The panel includes:

10.1-inch IPS display
1920 × 1200 resolution
Ten-point capacitive touchscreen
Integrated Raspberry Pi enclosure
Built-in kickstand
Screen controls
HDMI and USB connections
Internal cooling fan
Mounting options

It supports several Raspberry Pi models, including the Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 4 and older Pi 3 boards.

I bought a Raspberry Pi 5 with 4GB of memory specifically for this project.

The touchscreen does not include the Raspberry Pi itself, so that needs to be purchased separately.

Installing the Raspberry Pi

The panel comes with different internal mounting pieces and adapters depending on which Raspberry Pi model you are installing.

The process is straightforward when you follow the manual.

I did not follow the manual.

I installed the Pi, put everything together and then realised I had missed the small connector boards required to pass HDMI and USB between the Raspberry Pi and the display.

I then removed the Pi again, fitted the adapters and rebuilt it.

After that, I realised the microSD card slot was underneath the board.

The Pi came out for a second time.

The useful lesson is to insert the microSD card, install the connection boards and check every cable before screwing the Raspberry Pi into the enclosure.

Once everything was connected, the touchscreen worked immediately. I did not need to find or install any special touch drivers.

Fixing the noisy fan

My main hardware complaint was the included fan.

The fan inside my unit produced a noticeable high-pitched whine. It may have been specific to my sample, but it was far too loud for something that I wanted permanently mounted in my office and visible in videos.

I removed the original cooling solution and fitted a GeekPi Armor Lite cooler to the Raspberry Pi.

This uses a heatsink and a much quieter fan directly on the board. It required fitting several thermal pads and replacing some of the original mounting hardware, but it still fitted inside the Xbonfire enclosure.

The difference was immediate.

With the replacement cooler installed, the panel became effectively silent.

It was not a free solution, and I would have preferred the included fan to be quieter, but the problem was completely fixable.

Running Home Assistant on the Raspberry Pi

I installed Raspberry Pi OS and then ran Home Assistant in a Docker container.

Home Assistant is normally associated with smart lights, plugs, sensors and home automation. It is also extremely flexible, which made it a good foundation for this project.

Rather than using a standard smart-home dashboard, I created a dedicated print farm interface.

The panel now combines business information, printer monitoring and parts of my personal life in one touchscreen dashboard.

It is still Home Assistant underneath, but it no longer looks like a generic installation.

The main print farm dashboard

The overview page is designed to tell me what is happening in a few seconds.

It shows:

How many printers are currently running
Whether the printers are healthy
How many open orders I have
Revenue for today, this week and this month
Items currently being watched through Plex
Current energy usage and cost
My Claude and Codex usage
Upcoming shipping deadlines
My general task list
Bin and recycling collection information
Local weather

The printer health indicator is particularly useful.

Not all of my printers are in the same room. Instead of physically checking each one, I can glance at the panel and see whether they are all operating normally.

If a printer develops an error, the health status can change immediately.

The panel does not replace checking the machines completely, but it makes it much easier to notice when something needs attention.

Viewing all nine printers

The printer page displays every machine in one place.

Each printer has its own card showing information such as:

Printer name
Current status
Print progress
Remaining time
Current or most recent model
Camera preview
Temperature information
Pause and control options

Getting the cards to look consistent was one of the hardest parts of the project.

Bambu Lab printers have their own Home Assistant integration and custom cards. My Eryone and Prusa machines expose information through different systems, including Moonraker or similar interfaces.

Each integration provides slightly different data and presents it in a different format.

With a lot of help from Claude, I managed to make the cards look similar enough that the dashboard feels like a single system.

They are not completely identical, but they are close enough that I can quickly understand the status of every printer.

Printer camera feeds

Each printer card includes a camera preview where one is available.

I can tap the preview to make it larger or open it full-screen.

Bambu Lab camera quality is fairly limited, but it is still enough to confirm that a print is on the bed, moving normally and not turning into a pile of filament.

For printers outside my office, the camera feed is one of the most useful parts of the entire panel.

I no longer need to open a different application for each brand just to check whether the print still exists.

Combining orders from five platforms

The order page brings together sales from Etsy, Shopify, eBay, TikTok Shop and SeekMake.

SeekMake allows customers to upload custom models through my Shopify store and order them as prints.

I can filter the order list by platform or view everything together.

The dashboard also shows platform-specific revenue, allowing me to see which marketplace has earned the most over a selected period.

At the time I recorded the video, I was still waiting for full TikTok API access. TikTok’s application process required a large amount of information and rejected one submission because I had provided more detail than it wanted.

The other integrations were already working, and the dashboard was refreshing order data automatically.

As more data builds up, the revenue charts and platform comparisons should become increasingly useful.

A live shipping queue

The overview includes a short shipping queue showing orders due within the next few days.

There is also a dedicated page for the full list.

This means I can walk into the office and immediately see what needs to be printed, packed or dispatched without opening every individual marketplace.

For a print farm, this is more useful than a simple order count.

Ten open orders do not necessarily mean ten urgent orders. The shipping queue helps show which ones need attention first.

It turns the panel into a practical daily work list rather than just a collection of attractive statistics.

Flashing the lights when I receive an order

Because the dashboard runs through Home Assistant, it can interact with the smart lights around my home and office.

Whenever a new order arrives, the lights can briefly flash using a colour associated with the marketplace.

For example:

Etsy can flash orange
eBay can flash blue
TikTok Shop can flash purple
Shopify can flash green

After the animation finishes, the lights return to their previous colour or scene.

It is completely unnecessary, but it is also one of my favourite parts of the system.

During quieter periods, seeing the room light up when an order arrives is genuinely satisfying.

Around November and December, when orders can arrive every ten or fifteen minutes, it may become considerably less charming.

The automation can be disabled from the dashboard or Home Assistant app. It could also be placed on a schedule so that it only operates during working hours.

The lights will not turn themselves on in the middle of the night just to announce that somebody bought a yarn bowl.

Printer error alerts

I also want to use the lights for printer errors.

Instead of constantly checking the panel, Home Assistant could trigger a different animation whenever one of the machines pauses, loses connection or reports a fault.

That would give me an immediate visual warning anywhere in the house, provided the lights are already switched on.

The same idea could be extended to:

Completed prints
Filament runout warnings
Failed prints
High room temperatures
Low stock levels
Urgent shipping deadlines

Once the information is inside Home Assistant, it can trigger almost any connected device or notification.

Controlling my studio

The panel is also becoming the main control screen for my studio.

I can already switch smart lights on and off directly from the dashboard. Over time, I plan to add smart plugs, fans and other equipment.

One planned addition is a temperature and humidity sensor.

The room contains nine 3D printers, so it can become extremely warm. If the temperature rises too far, printers can begin to clog and the working environment becomes unpleasant.

Using a compatible sensor, Home Assistant could automatically:

Turn on a fan
Start a dehumidifier
Send a high-temperature warning
Switch off non-essential equipment
Change the panel display to show an alert

The same system could also monitor filament storage conditions or notify me when humidity becomes too high.

This is where the project becomes more than a printer dashboard.

It can actively respond to conditions inside the print farm.

Personal information on the same screen

Not every section is related to 3D printing.

The panel also shows my task list, local weather, bin collection dates, energy usage and Plex activity.

That may sound cluttered, but the dashboard is divided into swipeable pages rather than attempting to fit everything onto one screen.

The overview only contains the information I am likely to check repeatedly throughout the day.

Because it is touchscreen-friendly, I can move between printer monitoring, orders, smart-home controls and personal information without using a mouse or keyboard.

Anyone with a busy digital life could build something similar, even without a print farm.

The same idea could be used for:

Home office management
Content creation
Workshop monitoring
Smart-home control
Package tracking
Calendar and task management
Home server statistics
Energy monitoring

The value comes from choosing the information that matters to you.

Building the touchscreen interface

I used Claude for most of the dashboard configuration.

I explained what I wanted the pages to show, supplied details from the different integrations and repeatedly adjusted the result until it worked properly on a touchscreen.

Designing for touch is slightly different from creating a normal desktop dashboard.

Buttons need to be large enough to press accurately. Information needs to be readable from a distance, and the most important figures should be visible without scrolling through several menus.

The final layout uses large cards, simple navigation and swipeable sections.

AI made it much easier to deal with the YAML configuration, integrations and differences between printer systems. I still had to decide what the panel should do and test whether each section worked, but I did not need to manually write every part from scratch.

Without that help, this would probably have remained one of those projects I planned for years and never actually finished.

3D printing a wall mount

I did not want the panel permanently sitting on my desk.

The goal was to mount it on the wall beside my printers, where I could see it while working and use it as part of the background in future videos.

Naturally, I designed and printed a wall mount.

The first version was made from PLA and was too thin. It worked for several hours, but the weight and heat caused it to begin flexing.

I then tried printing a stronger version in ABS.

That print failed badly.

With the video deadline approaching, I returned to PLA and made the mount much thicker. The updated version supports the panel far more securely while leaving a gap behind it for airflow.

The original kickstand slots into the printed bracket, helping keep the screen in position.

There are still a few smaller sections I may reinforce in a future revision, but the new mount is considerably stronger.

This project may be powered by a Raspberry Pi, but it would not be complete without at least one unnecessary 3D printed accessory.

What the panel does well

The greatest benefit is not any individual feature.

It is having everything visible in one location.

Previously, checking the business could mean opening several marketplace dashboards, multiple printer applications, a task manager and Home Assistant.

Now I can walk past one screen and see most of what matters.

It also gives me a platform that can continue growing.

I can add a card when I buy another printer, connect another store, install a new sensor or create another automation without replacing the hardware.

The panel will probably never be completely finished.

That is part of the appeal.

What I would change

The Xbonfire panel works well, but there are a few things I would improve.

The original fan in my unit was far too loud. Replacing it solved the issue, but it added cost and required partially dismantling the panel.

A built-in battery would also be useful.

The panel is currently designed to remain connected to power. A battery would make it possible to pick it up, carry it around the print farm or use it temporarily away from the wall.

I would also appreciate clearer installation instructions showing the order in which the Pi, adapters, microSD card and internal cables should be fitted.

The manual contains the necessary information, but the design makes it easy to assemble everything before discovering that one small component is trapped underneath the board.

Most of my problems came from rushing rather than a fault with the screen, but a more obvious installation sequence would help.

Was it worth building?

Yes.

This panel does not physically print products or pack orders, but it reduces the amount of time I spend looking for information.

It gives me a clear view of the print farm and makes it easier to notice problems before they become expensive.

It also creates opportunities for automation.

Orders can trigger lights, printer errors can create alerts and room temperature can eventually control cooling equipment automatically.

The hardware itself is only part of the project.

The real value comes from Home Assistant, the integrations and the ability to build a dashboard around my exact business rather than adapting my workflow to somebody else’s software.

I finally have one place where I can see my printers, orders, revenue, tasks, shipping deadlines and studio controls.

It took several years of thinking there must be a better way.

Apparently, the better way was building it myself.