It is so difficult tofind modern electronics without telemetry and ads. Smartphones, laptops, TVs, home routers, security cameras, cars, game consoles, e-readers, projectors, 3D printers, fitness trackers, speakers, and even some printers. Why can’t customers be free from this data collection and advertising? It’s not that we don’t care about it. There simply aren’t many alternatives, and the few that do exist are either more expensive or offer fewer features. Seriously, we need a list of products we can buy without worrying about telemetry or advertising.
The following list is updated at https://lemmy.ml/post/52706206. Please note that this list may contain errors.
- 3D printers: Prusa 3D Printer
- Anything else that doesn’t come with ads or telemetry built in?
Could anyone help verify whether Prusa 3D Printer has any telemetry at all? And, hopefully, that Prusa isn’t planning to change its customer policies in the future to make telemetry collection or ads compulsory?
Snapmaker U1 has all their firmware on GitHub and works offline in Lan mode.
I’m using Anycubic Kobra S1. By default its probably not the most open printer but you can install Rinkhalis to make it work with Orca slicer.
Its been in LAN mode since day one, haven’t seen any outbound requests from it.
Agreed. We need more than scattered small brands though. Either a company forms to build anti-surveillance or aggregate all the small ones into a carefully curated marketplace.
We already have that it is called respects your freedom.
Framework laptops aren’t on this?
Why do think they should be here? Aren’t they just regular parts, just more repairable. They don’t have any extra openness on firmware side, do they?
No. The FSF is extremely strict on their requirements, so stuff like CPU microcode and proprietary firmware blobs for GPUs cannot be required for the hardware to run and must not be installed by default.
That disqualifies basically all modern x86 and ARM processors.
I understand and appreciate the intention behind this, but I do feel like it makes any list they make less helpful. People are going to buy a computer. Who not point those people to something like a framework, while including a disclaimer about microcode (or whatever the issue is)?
Perhaps reframing it helps: this list is helpful because you can show how short it is.
Treat it more like a communication and transparency offensive instead of a buy-this guide.
You know? That’s a great point and has changed my mind, thank you!
They are the uncompromising, principled voice in this particular space, and always have been, which can be important to have in society in general. If you would like pragmatism, then other peoples’ recommendations and opinions exist for that.
I know the community is working on a project called OpenCentauri, an open firmware for the Elegoo Centauri Carbon (great printer and amazing value for the money, but it uses a closed variant of Klipper, who knows what it’s doing in the background)
You also have the DIY Voron kits, and Sovol produces Prusa-likes and Voron-likes that usually use open firmware.
Just avoid Bambu as somebody who owns an A1 (set to LAN only mode, using a microSD card to transfer print files), as aside from the lock down shenanigans and attempting to take down forks of their Bambu Slicer software (which itself is a fork of a fork), they also use a closed firmware and are heavily promoting their cloud services. I also heard that Creality is one to be cautious of too.
How is “a closed variant of klipper” not a GPL violation?
It is. They’re solving the problem with threats, money and patience.
Fuckers.
While I don’t think prusa will go down this route the only way to ensure this is the case is a diy printer running open firmware like a voron, or using an older printer from before “cloud” was a thing for printers.
All it takes is prusa getting sold, guarantee whoever buys it will go down the route of telemetry bc it’s big money. Again, I don’t think that will happen (at least anytime soon) but the only way to guarantee it doesn’t is to control the hardware and firmware
Prusa printers are totally usable offline. With Prusa Link you can benefit from some simple comfort features while remaining totally inside your local network. You can block Internet access to the printer from your router and Prusa Link will still work totally fine in you local network.
I have to check my pihole logs to confirm for sure there isn’t any telemetry by default.
I have everything turned off, but my Prusa still updates its clock and tells me if it needs a firmware update.
I don’t think pihole is going to be able to tell the difference between that or reporting back filenames to Prusa.
I doubt they’re doing anything super sketchy, I just don’t think there’s a great way to verify for sure.
There is though, more than any other 3d printing company, you actually can be absolutely certain of what it’s doing
- Review the firmware code (https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware)
- Compile it yourself
- Flash it
Nice 404 on that link.
I have the very first model they sold, for which they did actively maintain a marlin fork. But that miniRAMBO board was completely offline.
I haven’t seen that kind of GitHub activity for recent models.
? I double checked; the link works for me…
Maybe the client you’re using doesn’t like the parentheses.
https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware
And whether activity is new or not is irrelevant to the concern of not knowing what the device is sound.
I think it’s more in your original hyperlink that the last parentheses was included in the hyperlink
Huh, weird
You have to manually turn on the prusa cloud features. Also the source for the firmware and the slicer are on github for you to check.
Voron’s are cool too if you like tinkering
Prusa Connect (online cloud) is totally optional. You can use Prusa Link locally to send the score to the printer wirelessly from the slicer. Prusa Link is a bit barebone but it does the job.
As alternative you can get a pi running octoprint to control the prusa by usb and keep the printer itself completely disconnected.
I have MK3 so PrusaLink is running on a pi already, via the onboard UART. I tried Octoprint with this setup very long ago and I had issues. The pi would be too slow to send the commands to the printer and would end up failing the prints sometimes. I haven’t revisited Octoprint since.
They are giving out a docker image now so you can host your own prusa cloud on your own network
Oh, that’s very cool, I didn’t know !
WAIT, WHAT???
Yeah they came out with a lot in the last month https://www.prusa3d.com/p/prusa-connect-local/early-access/
That’s pretty cool. Definitely going to install it once it’s out of early access.
I’ve just been using the Prusa Link via HomeAssistant, which is pretty useful, but the actual Prusa Connect does have more features that’d be fun to play with.
I print by transferring gcode on a USB stick to my Prusa printer. They could be capturing all the telemetry in the world, but it’s not connected to a network.
Prusa is very committed to privacy, Open-source and security. They even sell “critical infrastructure” variant of some of their printers with WiFi circuit removed: https://www.prusa3d.com/product/original-prusa-xl-2-tool-head-assembled-critical-infrastructure-edition/
