Nexus AI is a smart piece of software that’s used to detect 3D print failures. Developed by Fiberpunk initially for its Sentry Pro camera, Nexus AI is now also a free and open-source OctoPrint plug-in. All necessary files, including the OctoPrint plug-in, can be found on the project’s GitHub repo.

Fiberpunk is responsible for a small but growing raft of 3D printing add-ons and accessories (including the Node, which we recently tested) that expand your printer’s functionality. It took the Fiberpunk team just one week (of very long nights) to bring the tool online and release it for all.

Nexus AI presents a useful way to track down print failures early so you can manage waste more efficiently. It works using two software elements: the Nexus AI Octoprint plug-in and a Nexus AI local server service. The former captures images from your OctoPrint setup (a camera is necessary) and checks these photos for print failures using machine learning on the service server. You then receive a notification of the print failure, including a photo, into any mailbox.

If you want to try it for yourself, there’s a tutorial available for users. One hardware limitation is that it will only work with Windows computers with a minimum of 2 GB of memory.

While the plug-in is only currently available for OctoPrint users, a spokesperson at Fiberpunk said:

“We plan to expand to Klipper as well as potentially other systems. We opened up Nexus AI API for free so other teams can work with it freely. We plan to further open up Nexus AI as the ecosystem grows.”

The Nexus AI plug-in could potentially replace The Spaghetti Detective – recently superseded by Obico – which offers AI failure detection. Obico has both free and paid versions, whereas Nexus AI is entirely free. In the words of one Twitter user, there’s ​”some new competition in town”.