Remote Access
A guide to safe remote access.
Notice This guide does not include every step in detail, but is a recommendation for safe remote access.
You will need to decide if you want to receive status messages on your smartphone, have full remote access to Mainsail, or both.
Status messages
There are several options for sending status messages, some include additional functionality. (listed alphabetically)
Discord:
Mooncord by eliteSchwein is a bot that sends you status messages over Discord.
Moonraker:
Moonraker has built-in notification support for a variety of services via Apprise.
Obico provides free full remote access to the Mainsail web interface from anywhere through a secure tunnel without the need for a VPN or port forwarding.
Obico sends status messages as well as webcam snapshots to mobile push notification, Email, Telegram, Discord, and more.
Formerly known as The Spaghetti Detective, Obico is the first and best AI print failure detection. Let AI watch your prints and alert you through your preferred channel or pause the print if something looks fishy.
Obico is 100% open-source from the client to the server, including the AI failure detection. Self-host Obico server vs. Use Obico cloud
Free, secure, and unlimited remote access to your full Mainsail web interface built by the maker community. Trusted by over 145k makers, our worldwide server network provides instant loading and full-frame rate webcam streaming while keeping your access secure and private.
Gadget, OctoEverywhere's free and unlimited AI print failure detection, uses next-generation computer vision AI models to continuously watch your prints and alert you or pause them if something is wrong.
OctoEverywhere empowers your favorite iOS or Android apps with remote access from anywhere, including full-frame rate webcam streaming.
OctoEverywhere's notification engine keeps you up-to-date with your prints, sending real-time stats and full-resolution webcam images where you want them: Email, SMS, Push Notifications, Discord, Telegram, Webhooks, and more.
Telegram:
Moonraker-telegram-bot by nlef is a bot that provides you status updates using the Telegram messaging service.
Moonraker-telegram by Raabi91 is a bot that also brings you status updates using the chat app Telegram.
These tools are installed on the local machine and send status messages to their respective platforms. No changes are needed to externally access your local network.
For details, please refer to each project’s instructions and documentation.
Remote Access to Mainsail
What not to do:
Please do not open ports of Mainsail/Moonraker in your router to the rest of the world. There are plenty of reports of OctoPrint installations being freely accessible on the Internet, with just as many reasons why this is not a good idea.
What you could do:
Use an external service provider such as Tailscale to gain access to your home network.
A potential downside is not having personal control of the connection.
Reverse Proxy
Recommendation what you should do:
Set up your own secured VPN tunnel.
In your router
Or your Raspberry Pi
OctoEverywhere empowers the worldwide maker community with free, secure, and unlimited remote access to their entire Mainsail web UI from anywhere, including full resolution and frame rate webcam streaming.
OctoEverywhere is a community-based project with the goal of cloud-empowering 3D printers worldwide. Along with remote access, OctoEverywhere provides free and unlimited AI print failure detection, community Moonraker app support, real-time print notifications, live streaming, secure shared remote access, and more!
Set up VPN
Several routers allow you to set up a VPN tunnel. After you have configured the VPN and logged in from another device, you will have secure access to your entire network, including Mainsail.
If your router does not support this, you can also set up your own VPN, for example, using your Raspberry Pi. OpenVPN, WireGuard or PiVPN are all options that could work.
To be able to reach your home network even with a non-static IP address, you will need to use a Dynamic DNS service. This will forward a domain directly to your IP address. Often these DynDNS services can also be set up directly in your router so when your external IP address changes, your domain will be automatically updated. Free Dynamic DNS services include DuckDNS or FreeDNS.
Notice
The devices that you use to access VPN tunnel are assigned to a different address range. This address range must be configured in Moonraker under trusted_clients and cors_domains. See also Moonraker’s documentation on network authorization.
For example:
192.168.1.x // devices on your regular LAN
192.168.50.x // devices connected through your VPN tunnel
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