A new Kickstarter campaign is touting the Wanhao Smart Pad, an open-source Klipper screen that will be compatible with “all 3D printers”.
Featuring a 4.3-inch LCD display with a touchscreen, Wanhao says the bulky-looking pad would simultaneously connect to your 3D printer, PC, tablet, and smartphone via Wi-Fi. Four USB ports, meanwhile, would power peripherals, with an OTG port for direct device-to-device communication, and an Ethernet port allowing for a wired connection.
The proposed pad would also boast brightness adjustment, and GPIO access for greater flexibility and control of prints, and an “accessible” Micro SD card slot on the outside of the device’s casing– which doesn’t necessarily seem like an enormous selling point, much less an innovative feature. A “universal”, adjustable magnetic mount for the screen does look cool, and working as advertised would allow the screen to be positioned just about anywhere on a V-slot rail.
Given these features, the liberal, industry-wide usage of the term “open source”, and the similar screens on the market (such as BigTreeTech’s Pad7 and Creality’s Sonic Pad), the Wanhao Smart Pad wouldn’t necessarily be an exciting new addition to the market. Wanhao does promise to create a dedicated GitHub on which it will host plans, code, and tutorials – although there’s no set date for when that might happen.
Nevertheless, the Wanhao Smart Pad’s campaign has already blasted well beyond its $5,493 goal, with $73,610 pledged at the time of this writing. Perhaps pricing has something to do with that; early bird packages for Wanhao’s offering start at about $83 (€75) – quite a drop from the aforementioned BTT Pad7 ($129) and nearly half the cost of the Creality Smart Pad ($159). Should the Wanhao Smart Pad fulfill its promises, buyers could expect their devices to begin shipping in November.
Also worth noting, if only for a laugh, is the campaign’s eyebrow-raising dedication to Elon Musk, “a bold pioneer who has pushed the boundaries of our imagination and inspired us to dream bigger”. It reads more like satire than anything, working to cheapen a product that’s not necessarily excitement-inducing in the first place. Who knows, the finished product may blow our socks off. Until that date comes, though, there doesn’t seem to be much worth Tweeting (er… throwing an X) about.
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Editor’s Note – This article highlights a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. Kickstarter is not a shop; campaigns are under no legal obligation to deliver on crowdfunding promises, nor offer refunds on unfulfilled campaign rewards.
For more insight, read our article 8 Things to Watch for When Backing a 3D Printing Kickstarter.
License: The text of "A New Open Source Klipper Screen is Live on Kickstarter" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.